HenryV1598

So, I'm a bit late to this party (by almost a year). I found this post while doing a general Google search for some info on focal reducers. There's a couple things I want to toss into the discussion. First off, I would not recommend ANYONE use Amazon reviews (or any other major retailer's reviews for that matter) as any kind of authoritative source of information. Amazon's reviews are just plain bad. While some of them come from real users, an enormous amount come from paid users. Do a quick Google search on the words Amazon, reviews, and fraud and you'll find several articles about the problems. But to briefly explain the issue: Amazon, and similar sites, use reviews as a major element in their search result ranking (the full algorithm is proprietary, but they do acknowledge that reviews play a role). As such, it strongly benefits a vendor to have the best reviews possible in order to appear high in the search results. Research has also shown that most buyers don't look past the first page of results, and rarely on to the second or third page. If you are a vendor with wares listed on Amazon and your product doesn't show up on the first page of search results, then you aren't going to see much, if anything, in the way of sales. You could have the absolute best product to match a customer search, but if you're not on the first page, the odds are against the consumer actually seeing your listing and buying from you. And even on the first page, if you're not at or near the top, you're likely to not see many sales. Because of this there are a number of companies that hire people to fraudulently review their products. Other businesses exist to provide SEO optimization for companies, and they hire people to do the fraudulent reviews, insulating the company that's only paying for the optimization. In the long run, you end up with a review system that's entirely unreliable. Does Celestron do this? I can't say. But if you look at the Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ, arguably one of the WORST telescopes Celestron offers, it has glowing reviews. Some of these are probably honest reviews from people who don't know better. But with over 2,200 reviews giving it an average of 3.8 out of 5, I strongly suspect that a lot of the good reviews are not from real customers. The other thing I wanted to mention is the comment from someone about Celestron accessories being optimized for Celestron products, and, I would assume, the claim would be that Meade accessories work best with Meade products, etc... And while there may be some truth to this, mostly it's unfounded. In fact, most Celestron products aren't even made by Celestron anymore. In 2005, Celestron was purchased by the SW Technology Corporation in Delaware, which is a subsidiary of the Synta Technolgy Corporation of Taiwan. Synta had a long relationship with Celestron prior to this point, manufacturing a large amount of their equipment. But as of 2005, they outright own Celestron. nearly all of the hardware sold under the Celestron brand name is made by the Suzhou Synta Optical Technology Company, which is located in Suzhou, China. Synta manufactures most of the hardware sold under the Celestron brand name here, along with that sold under the Sky-Watcher brand name (which was created by Synta in 1999), and Tasco, which they also bought out in the 90's. In addition, they manufacture a lot of hardware sold by Orion and others. While Meade is owned by the Ningbo Sunny Electronic Company of China, I believe it highly likely that at least some of their hardware is manufactured by Synta and re-branded. The dirty little not-so-secret truth in the industry is that a handful of manufacturers in Taiwan and China, including both Synta companies, Ningbo Sunny, and Guan Sheng Optical (GSO) produce the vast majority of the low and middle-range priced telescopes and equipment on the market. Apertura and Zhumell, which offer some excellent Dobs, are both made by GSO. Astro-Tech, which is the house-brand of Astronomics, is GSO. Third-Planet Optics, or TPO, which is the house-brand of Oceanside Photo and Telescope (OPT), is made by GSO. Orion's SkyQuest line of Dobs is made by Synta, but their SkyLine Dobs are made by GSO. With the exception of some of the higher-end brands like Takahashi, ASA, Planewave, and the like, most (not all, but most) of the consumer astronomy products are made in China by only a few manufacturers. In some cases there are modifications done either to spec during manufacture or after delivery to the distributor (for example, the Astro-Tech 8" Imaging Newtonian has a set of baffles that are not found on the otherwise identical TPO 8" Imaging Newtonian). But the core of the equipment is the same. And between these different manufacturers, it's difficult to tell the difference in production quality. Only one major instrument that I know of sold by Celestron is actually made in the US, and that's the C14 (thought I wouldn't be surprised if they also made some of the RASA instruments). With this in mind, it's hard to defend the statement that those accessories work best with telescopes made by the same brand. In the case of the Celestron EdgeHD scopes, this is true, only because the f/7 focal reducers made to go with them are made specifically for those scopes. The EdgeHD SCT line has built-in field correction enhancements, and using the standard Celestron f/6.3 reducer/flattener would over-correct. So Celestron sells the f/7 reducer for these scopes (and they're not interchangeable between models) which takes into account the flattening that's already been done. I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect that the Meade, Celestron, Antares, Alstar, and other f/6.3 reducers are manufactured on the same production line and just branded after-the-fact. I've been told that the Meade is optimized for smaller sensors (it was introduced for use with the DSI series and Meade's 8" f/10 SCT and its larger siblings), but I haven't seen any documentation proving that it's different from the Celestron. In the meantime, nearly everyone I've seen doing astrophotography, either professionally or for fun, uses a combination of equipment from a variety of manufacturers. Personally I use an Orion Newtonian OTA with a Baader Planetarium coma corrector and an SBIG camera with a Vernonscope guide scope that has an Atik camera for autoguiding, and all of this is mounted on top of an iOptron mount. And it works just fine. So, unless someone can offer up documentation that shows that a Celestron focal reducer works better with a C8 than the equivalent Meade reducer, I'm going to remain highly skeptical.