Have telescopes THAT much improved in just 25 years?

[Dgennero]

Hi.
About 25 years ago, I had a 114mm Newtonian reflector, about $200 at that time, with motor control (the motor was called HAND) and lousy optics. And one of the rules was: NEVER buy any reflector under 100mm aperture.
I just tested a very small Newtonian reflector (MEADE DS-2076AT, 76mm, f/9), also cheap ($150), but it comes with autostar computerized tracking, and my first tests (M33, Pleiades, Albireo, Venus) reveal (I'm not used to anything better!) in my eyes crystal-clear images, and there is no wobbling of the tripod; Venus has sharply defined contours like the moon with the naked eye, viewed with the no-name 4mm eyepiece; M33 is no problem (I never found it with the old scope), and the two components of Albireo are clearly defined dots.
Only the tracking system needs some training - or I do :-?

[milli360]

You probably should have been able to separate the Albireo pair, with the 114mm. They're more than 30 arcseconds apart.

Could you even focus it? :)

[stu]

I read the subject line on this post and immediately thought to Kitt Peak. Take the 4 m Mayall (sp?) that's the largest there. It's housed in something like a 14-story building, and the mirror weighs many many many tons. Take the 3.5 WIYN, almost as large, and yet it's building is only about 5 stories (it's 3 floors, but I'm pretty sure it's technically larger than "3 stories"), the "tube" is something like 1/5 as long, and the mirror is a very small fraction the weight of the 4 m.

That's the difference between 1970s and 1990s technology. At least for bit 'scopes.

[Kaptain K]

Optically, the good scopes haven't gotten much better, since the laws of optics haven't changed and junk scopes are still junk. The stuff in the middle has improved significantly. Scopes with good optics are now available for the same price as the junk stuff.

The biggest change is the availability of goto capability on even bottom tier scopes.