Travel light

The lightweight, compact design of the RVO Horizon 72ED is impressive. In its stowed collapsed form, with the dew shield and focuser fully retracted, it is only 34cm long. The optical tube itself weighs just 2.68kg, light enough to hold easily in your hand and easy to remove from the tube rings to adjust position if needed.

These aspects enabled us to use the scope on our Star Adventurer tracking mount, the extra long Vixen mounting bar enabling us to achieve the best balance. We were then able to take a visual tour of many celestial targets manually without Go-To, with our dielectric star diagonal and a range of eyepieces in the focuser. We swapped to a GPCAM 290C camera and used a 5x Powermate to capture a video of the triple star Iota Cassiopeiae using the same simple setup. Only the COVID-19 lockdown stopped us taking the Horizon 72ED to a darker site and enjoying the easy setup without the need for a large mount.