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Who are Ostara?


gooseholla

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Cant say who they are and where they come from. I asked the same question a few months back prior to buying one of their 2 inch skyglow filters and never received any response. So I just assumed maybe they are a newish company ?? I have only used the filter once in that time and for the sum of £20 it seems to work ok. I notice a lot of their eyepieces on Fleabay and also on Northstar Astronomy. A bit vague but you have 100% more responses regarding Ostara than I got. Look forward to hearing if anyone else has experience of this brand.

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The ED eyepieces look as if they are from United Optics, so I guess that the other items are from the same source. UO make some decent equipment so could be worth considering.

They will have the items purchased badged as Ostara.

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So basically, they do what Telescope house do, and brand other people's eyepieces, kit, etc?

Thats what much of the stuff that is available to us is - re-branded stuff. Synta do it (eg:Skywatcher / Celestron / Orion (USA) / Saxon, etc) and GSO do it (eg: Meade, Revelation, TS (Telescope Services), Zhumell, etc).

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  • 6 months later...

I'm a bit late here but I can vouch for Ostara having tried a few of their products. They seem to be the same as higher priced brands but without paying over the odds for the name. I have tried some plossl eyepieces, a couple of filters and their 10x 50 elinor binoculars that won the awards in sky at night magazine. The quality is excellent but without the higher price tag. I think they my be made on the same production line to the same specifications as well known branded gear. I have heard stories of factories in china making identical products for different companies but the well known brands charging double for the exact same product because they have their name printed on. Canon for example was selling a compact camera for £40 whereas another unknown brand was selling the EXACT same camera off the exact same production line for £20 but without the famous brand!

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There are rumours the Kunming and other Chinese OEM sell several grade of optics. The best of the batch get taken up by expensive brands like APM and Stellarvue. The mid range brands get the mid quality and then finally the rejects are sold though some low priced outlets. There is a possibility the Ostara may be one of those. After all, there must be a good reason why they are cheaper.

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There are rumours the Kunming and other Chinese OEM sell several grade of optics. The best of the batch get taken up by expensive brands like APM and Stellarvue. The mid range brands get the mid quality and then finally the rejects are sold though some low priced outlets. There is a possibility the Ostara may be one of those. After all, there must be a good reason why they are cheaper.

I've heard this too and it makes sense to me. Your big brand customers get the "grade A" stuff, etc, etc.

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I would have thought Telescope House take a good deal more care with what they are selling. Rebadged or not they have been around for many years under one name or another, It is possible many of the cheaper eyepieces banged out on e-bay and the like are of poorer quality than what looks the same, that is not to say Ostara is rubbish, but in my life time rarely is cheap good.

It is not that long back that clear copies of the Meade UWA 30mm and 24mm were being sold for less money on Teleskop Services site, these moved brand names over a period of a few months.

Alan

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The Ostara goods are not seconds or graded or stock or material from other brands. They are built to order to exact specifications selected by a company called optical hardware. From what I can tell Ostara are very nice. After all they have won a few awards including Sky at Night magazine group test awards. The power of marketing and branding is very strong and the overheads such as offices, staff, global advertising of the larger known companies is also accounted for in their prices.

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I have an ostara 20mm plossl in my collection that I picked up recently. I can't compare it to anything really posh cos I haven't got anything like that.

But it is massively better than the standard 20mm celestron ep my scope came with and is just as clear as the second hand Japanese circleT 20mm Ortho I got for Christmas - but with a much wider fov. I bought the ostara as a cheap ep to combine with a cheap 0.5 focal reducer for my 70 mm frac as a guide scope, but I do find myself using it as a normal ep in my main scope for the Pleiades etc and its v.nice

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as an addition to the above post, i also have a 30 and 15mm ostara plossl and also use them frequently ( when we arent seemingly endlesly clouded in!!!!)

but again i dont have any good eps to compare them tooin those sizes. i didnt bother buying a smaller range, as i have another ortho, a tmb and a couple of early jap meade 4000 eps from 12mm and below.

but in my eyes the ostaras dont have any obvious deficiencies compared to my other eps and they cost ALOT less than the circleT orthos that i got second hand.

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SWA82 8.8mm (1.25") RRP £229.00

SWA82 14mm (1.25") RRP £269.99

SWA82 24mm (2")

RRP £349.99

This is more expensive than meade, by about £100 on each eyepiece. So meade is cheap and cheerful? :D

They are a fraction of that price on amazon

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I've just been looking at the Ostara eyepieces on Amazon. They seem to be a rather mixed collection of clones to be honest. I've used one of the 20mm plossls a few years back (the name Ostara was not around back then) and it was an OK low cost plossl but really nothing special. To be fair it's only £20 on Amazon which is about right as it's similar to the Skywatcher standard plossls which cost £20 from FLO.

The 2" SWA eyepiece is the same as the Adler Skarp / Rigel / Ascension and a number of others. The Ascension one costs less than the Ostara version on Amazon (£60 v's £69).

I think Ostara is another brand under which to buy these chinese made eyepieces, some of which are better than others.

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John,

is it possibly worth me posting my 20mm ostara to you for a play with at some point? as i said in my earlier post, to my untrained eye it is on a par visually with the 20mm ortho i have - all the way up to the edge. maybe i have a 'good one'...

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John,

is it possibly worth me posting my 20mm ostara to you for a play with at some point? as i said in my earlier post, to my untrained eye it is on a par visually with the 20mm ortho i have - all the way up to the edge. maybe i have a 'good one'...

Thanks for the offer. With the weather we have had it may be a long time until I can use it though, which would not be fair to you !

I've not heard of a 20mm ortho - what range is that one from ?

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Thanks for the offer. With the weather we have had it may be a long time until I can use it though, which would not be fair to you !

I've not heard of a 20mm ortho - what range is that one from ?

university optics 20mm, however it looks like i have confused myself between an erfle and ortho - thought they were the same but apparently not - as it looks the same as my 6mm UO circleT eyepiece so i thought inside the glass bits and design was the same. learn summink new everyday!

post-26554-0-78355600-1362740329_thumb.j

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I've just been looking at the Ostara eyepieces on Amazon. They seem to be a rather mixed collection of clones to be honest. I've used one of the 20mm plossls a few years back (the name Ostara was not around back then) and it was an OK low cost plossl but really nothing special. To be fair it's only £20 on Amazon which is about right as it's similar to the Skywatcher standard plossls which cost £20 from FLO.

...

There is one different. When it is time to upgrade, you can recover £10-15 for a SW plossl on used market, but an Ostara have almost no resale value at all.

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I would love to be able to compare a few in order to really evaluate the quality difference. I have to admit that I haven't had much experience with different eyepieces as I'm still a beginner but some eyepieces may look similar as a lot of Chinese factories use the same 'templates' but the quality of the optics can vary significantly and can't be compared in pictures on websites.

I suppose that's a good reason to stick with known brands, but it seems to me, that known brands are charging much much more for the exact same thing, as they have to pay for millions of pounds of advertising and publicity etc.

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I would love to be able to compare a few in order to really evaluate the quality difference. I have to admit that I haven't had much experience with different eyepieces as I'm still a beginner but some eyepieces may look similar as a lot of Chinese factories use the same 'templates' but the quality of the optics can vary significantly and can't be compared in pictures on websites.

I suppose that's a good reason to stick with known brands, but it seems to me, that known brands are charging much much more for the exact same thing, as they have to pay for millions of pounds of advertising and publicity etc.

With many Chinese manufacturing, the quality can vary significantly even if the optics came from the same factory. Take Kunming United Optics for example. They make the BA1 (Celestron Skymaster) which has a rather poor reputation to the BA8 (Helios Apollo) which is suppose to be as good as it gets short of a pair of £1k Japanese made Fujinon.

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I've just bought a 25mm Ostara plossl eyepiece off amazon for just over £20 which is less than half price! I have my Celestron 25mm to compare it with. I will post the result once it arrives. (If it isn't an improvement then I can send it back :) I have the Ostara moon filter too and it's pretty much identical to my mates Meade one.

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I've just bought a 25mm Ostara plossl eyepiece off amazon for just over £20 which is less than half price! I have my Celestron 25mm to compare it with. I will post the result once it arrives. (If it isn't an improvement then I can send it back :) I have the Ostara moon filter too and it's pretty much identical to my mates Meade one.

Thats a good price for a 25mm plossl - the same that First Light Optics sell the Skywatcher 25mm plossl for.

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Their Moon & Skyglow filter seems okay, identical to the Skywatcher LPR. I was worried considering the dirt cheap price of £9.95 with delivery for the 1.25". But so far we cannot tell the difference from the 2" Skywatcher.

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