The market is filled with many dedicated telescopes for DSO lovers like sophisticated APO refractors, astrographs and fast Ritchey Chretien reflectors, but for some reason this is not the case for hi-res planetary observers! It could be called discrimination: there is no dedicated instrument available out there yet to achieve diffraction limited images with Solar System objects.

Schmidt Cassegrain telescopes are commonly used for this purpose, but this is a generic mass produced telescope which cannot meet the expectations of advanced planetary observers who want to push resolution limits further and further.

Newtonians are a good alternative to SCTs but large apertures (30cm and up) need a long tube which means extra weight, expensive mounts to be purchased, primary mirror cooling issues, etc.
Maksutov Cassegrain telescopes are also a good alternative, but the thick corrector lens makes the scope heavy and expensive. Further, the anti reflection coating sometimes blocks the UV part of the spectrum, so specific filters for Venusian cloud study etc. cannot be used. In addition, the primary mirror is nicely insulated inside the OTA, so cooling down is also an issue with this design.

 

For this reason LAZZAROTTI OPTICS decided to produce an optimized Dall Kirkham solution, preserving the well known benefits of this optical design to deliver the best results for planetary observation, while at the same time removing the issues listed above.
To learn more about this innovative solution please see the GLADIUS page.