Telescope-Service: Ritchey-Chretien (RC) Telescopes

Real Ritchey-Chretien (RC) telescopes share many design principles with the classical Cassegrain concept. They are known for their excellent photographical performance.

Two mirrors without a correcting lens produce a large field free of coma. The image field has a strong curvature, though, resulting in a very small usable field. For this reason the RC telescope is equipped with a correcting lens close to the focal plane. This lens corrects for the field curvature, resulting in a very large usable field at a very high resolution.

In direct comparison with a classical Cassegrain the RC telescope offers a corrected field that is about three times as large. For this an RC must be very carefully made, otherwise the very good theoretical performance would not be passed on to the real telescope.

Main Fields of Use For RC Telescopes

RC telescopes offer a very large, well corrected field. For this reason RCs are ideally suited for astro-imaging. Very many of the best astro-images that you can find throughout the internet are made with Ritchey-Chretiens. The RC is particularly effective with the new generation of digital and CCD cameras with their very high image resolution.

On this page Telescope-Service offers only true RC telescopes, not variants or entirely different telescope designs. It is this exact telescope design that has been in frequent and successful use among professional astronomers for many years. And now this telescope is also available for amateurs.

GSO has designed two new Ritchey-Chretien (RC) telescopes of the highest quality level. The telescopes have an excellent optical and mechanical quality, innovative features such as a Carbon Fiber tube (except 6" model), and above all they are very affordable! For further information please see our Online Shop!

Available apertures:

152mm / 203mm / 254mm