Good Deal - Celestron Celestar 8inch SCT ?

[John]

I have been offered what looks like a great deal on a Celestron 8 inch SCT with Starbright coatings, fork mounted, motor driven in RA (manual slo mo in DEC) on a heavy duty wedge, tripod, 50mm RA finder, telrad, focal reducer etc, etc. All looks in very good nick but it is 13 years old. How reliable are these scopes mechanically and were the mid-1990's a good period for Celestron optics ? (I have been advised that the ones rushed out for Halley's return had some QC issues).

All thoughts welcome !.

John

[GazOC]

Mass produced SCTs had an iffy reputation in the 70s and 80s, I was under the impression things had picked up by the mid-90's.

[GordonCopestake]

Depends how much cash they are asking. You can buy a modern C8 OTA for £400 second hand. So if it's less than this then it's probably a good deal

[mike bacanin]

hello john

i owned one of these from brand new in 1996. absolutely superb optically,would be good if it has the hand controller to adjust the object in view. mount quite stable but not as rigid as the gp versions, ok for visual and very portable.

i suspect this may be the same scope i was offered a few months ago.

if you are interested in buying i can direct you to a guy in america who can probably supply a hand control unit.

regards

mike

[John]

Thanks for the feedback guys - Mike, this one has a hand controller, thanks for the offer of a contact through - if I buy it I might want to put a dec motor on it - where can I get one of those ?.

In truth I'm a bit torn at the moment - I've been promising myself another ED100 - I just love the scopes but now the Celestar 8 has come up, fully equipped, at around the price of a used ED100 OTA - so I'm in a quandary. I think my head is saying go for the SCT for the all-round potential and aperture but my heart still hankers over an ED100.

It's probably a "no brainer" for you out there but not so clear from my perspective at the moment.

John

[GordonCopestake]

What mount are you running at the moment? If it's a HEQ5 or EQ6 capacity mount, then I would recommend selling the megrez and getting a C8/ED80 combo. Best of all worlds. You'll miss the M90 though heh, beautiful scope

[mike bacanin]

john

try this guy in us for dec motor

GREG SCHILLER 505-598-0647

EMAIL objectsinthesky@yahoo.com

regards

mike

[bonsai]

I have this scope and optics are fine but cant seem to find hand controller for imaging so if any one can help?nige:headbang: