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What do you think of this little tabletop refractor?


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orion-starblast-80mm-autotracker-refract

I just ordered one of these. It's the Orion Starblast 80mm Refractor. It hasn't been delivered yet, so I'm patiently daydreaming about what I will be able to see with it. This is the first telescope I've ever purchased, so I'm excited. I understand that it won't see much, but I am curious about what I will be able to see. Here are the specs:

Best for viewing = Lunar & planetary

Best for imaging = Lunar & planetary
User level = Beginner
Optical design = Refractor
Optical diameter = 80mm
Focal length = 350mm
Focal ratio = f/4.3
Coatings = Coated
Optics type = Air-spaced doublet
Glass material = Crown/Flint
Eyepieces Super Plossl = 25.0mm, 10.0mm
Magnification with included eyepieces = 14x, 35x
Resolving power = 1.45arc*sec
Lowest useful magnification = 12x
Highest useful magnification = 160x
Highest theoretical magnification = 160x
Limiting stellar magnitude = 12.2
Optical quality = Diffraction limited
Finder scope = EZ Finder II
Focuser = Internal
Diagonal degrees = 1.25" 90° Mirror Star
Mount type = Altazimuth
Astro-imaging capability = Lunar & planetary
Computerized compatibility = Go-To system
Tracking rates = Sidereal
Motor type = DC Servo motors with encoders
Tube material = Aluminum
Tripod material = Wood
Length of optical tube = 12.5 in.
Weight, optical tube = 2.9 lbs.
Weight, mount/tripod = 8.5 lbs.
Weight, fully assembled = 11.4 lbs.
So what do you think? Will I be able to see some distant stuff with this little guy? At the very least I'm hoping to be able to split a few stars, look at planets, that sort of thing, but I'm hoping to maybe even see a nebula or two... Does anyone think that will be possible? What else might I be able to see, provided I am in a place with no light pollution, and the seeing is good?
I'm brand new to this hobby. That's why this is my first purchase. I also have an old 114mm newtonian reflector that was given to me, but I rarely use it because it's bulky and I need to learn how to use the equatorial mount, and it's just complicated. I've seen really detailed, awesome images of Jupiter and 4 moons in it though. Wow!
Anyway, I want to get serious, and I thought this would be a good little scope that I could just pick up and go with it, easy to set up, then it tracks the objects for me (once I find them first). So, it seems perfect. But, I wonder if any of you pros can tell me what it can do, based on the specs? Thank you! I like it here so far! :)
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It is quite a fast scope, so widefield, the magnifications with the ep's provided are a bit low, but add a 2x  barlow and you are up to 70x with the 10mm.

With good ep's you will get reasoanable lunar views. You should be able to see Jupitiers moons and Saturns rings, but the surface detail will be more difficult due to small image size.

This scope will be good on brighter DSO's where wide fields are needed.

I do not know about theire goto set up, I have used both Celestron and Skywatcher's versions and each is different.

Invest in a sturdy walk around table.  Enjoy! and use it as a learning tool.

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I use an 80mm telescope, but on an Equatorial mounting. Mine has a 400mm focal length, so can acheive slightly more magnification. I love my little telescope - you can see a lot more with it than you might expect. Not sure I'd desribe it as being a good planetary scope. With a x80 magnification - 10mm EP and barlow - I could see the main cloud belts of Jupiter very clearly last night. It'll be best on open star clusters.

I've written some thoughts on what these sorts of telescopes are good for on my blog below - I've not prettied it up yet, but it sums up what the ST80 is good at!

DD

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My main concern is the f/4.3 aspect, that is a fast scope for the application.

Being that fast and an achro is my concern.

With a reasonable 5mm eyepiece you will get 70x, if the image is decent then you will see banding on Jupiter and the 4 moons. I am not sure that Saturn will be very good. You really need more magnification and that will be the problem.

I have a Meade ETX-70 and the eyepieces I have for that are the Astro-Tech Paradigms at 5mm, 8mm, 25mm. That is also a 350mm focal length. Boiught a TMB 4mm clone and that does not perform well, the A-T P at 5mm is fairly good. That is a fairly good selection for the scope and covers all I need. You could swap the 25mm for the 18mm if wanted and not lose anything. With a reasonable 2x barlow that would make a 4mm with the 8mm eyepiece. May be worth tryong to see what the result is - will say I have not bothered, quite happy with 70x for what I use the scope for.

The scope is not goto - see a mention of goto in a post or two. It needs setiing up  - I assume pointing North and after that it will track.

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That looks just like the Skywatcher Virtuoso mount.

So has some tracking caspability (perhaps will drift a higher mags)

The Virtuoso mount can take a 4 kilo pay load (edit some say only. 2 kilos so it is an unknown really)  so check what your mount can as that opens up in future fitting a different telescope to it.

The Virtuoso comes with either a 90Mak or 114 Newt but this I guess is for the European market.

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Low power wide field is its best application, It will be good on the brighter larger dso's, open clusters m42 and the like. you will see some banding and 4 moons on jupiter, the rings of saturn but not in great detail. And the moon. There is likely to be significant false colour off axis on bright objects but hopefully you should have some fun with it.

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It is quite a fast scope, so widefield, the magnifications with the ep's provided are a bit low, but add a 2x  barlow and you are up to 70x with the 10mm.

With good ep's you will get reasoanable lunar views. You should be able to see Jupitiers moons and Saturns rings, but the surface detail will be more difficult due to small image size.

This scope will be good on brighter DSO's where wide fields are needed.

I do not know about theire goto set up, I have used both Celestron and Skywatcher's versions and each is different.

Invest in a sturdy walk around table.  Enjoy! and use it as a learning tool.

Thank you. I did forget to mention that I also purchased a 2x shorty barlow, so I hope that is a decent choice. I wanted to keep it small, and I also knew that anything greater than 2x would be more than this little scope can handle. Also, this scope is "Goto Ready" but it doesn't come with the controller. All it has is automatic tracking, so I have to find the object first, then it will (presumably) keep it in field. MUCH thanks for the suggestion on a sturdy table! I didn't entirely think that far ahead yet, lol. But, I do have a sturdy hardware table that I use for my portable tablesaw. I think I will try that first. :)

Congrat Bro for have had that Starblast one.

Hope there is clear night sky so you can see some nebulas

Thank you!! I hope so too.

I use an 80mm telescope, but on an Equatorial mounting. Mine has a 400mm focal length, so can acheive slightly more magnification. I love my little telescope - you can see a lot more with it than you might expect. Not sure I'd desribe it as being a good planetary scope. With a x80 magnification - 10mm EP and barlow - I could see the main cloud belts of Jupiter very clearly last night. It'll be best on open star clusters.

I've written some thoughts on what these sorts of telescopes are good for on my blog below - I've not prettied it up yet, but it sums up what the ST80 is good at!

DD

Thank you for this response. It's nice to talk to someone else who has such a small telescope, and likes it. I can see by the responses here that clusters and bright DSOs are going to be my primary targets, and that's wonderful because I have never EVER looked at any of these objects before, so this will be exciting! I simply want to learn as much about the night sky as I possibly can, and I've already experienced upclose views of the moon and planets before. That means that this scope should be nice and versatile for me, I hope. :)

My main concern is the f/4.3 aspect, that is a fast scope for the application.

Being that fast and an achro is my concern.

With a reasonable 5mm eyepiece you will get 70x, if the image is decent then you will see banding on Jupiter and the 4 moons. I am not sure that Saturn will be very good. You really need more magnification and that will be the problem.

I have a Meade ETX-70 and the eyepieces I have for that are the Astro-Tech Paradigms at 5mm, 8mm, 25mm. That is also a 350mm focal length. Boiught a TMB 4mm clone and that does not perform well, the A-T P at 5mm is fairly good. That is a fairly good selection for the scope and covers all I need. You could swap the 25mm for the 18mm if wanted and not lose anything. With a reasonable 2x barlow that would make a 4mm with the 8mm eyepiece. May be worth tryong to see what the result is - will say I have not bothered, quite happy with 70x for what I use the scope for.

The scope is not goto - see a mention of goto in a post or two. It needs setiing up  - I assume pointing North and after that it will track.

That is very helpful, thank you very much! Yes, it is true that it is not already a goto scope... the controller for that is quite more money than I can spend at the moment... but it is ready for a goto controller. There is a port to connect one. This scope only comes with motorized tracking, so it will track the objects after I find them. But if I want them to be found FOR me, I will need to buy the controller. It's starting to sound to me like this scope will be an excellent tool for me to learn the night sky, to know what's even up there for me to be able to seek out in a larger telescope. I hope to finally see nebulae and clusters, which I've never seen before. In the past, when looking through the newtonian, I would pretty much always look at Jupiter, the moon, and Saturn. That's about the limits of what I've seen before. :)

That looks just like the Skywatcher Virtuoso mount.

So has some tracking caspability (perhaps will drift a higher mags)

The Virtuioso mount can take a 4 kilo pay load so check what your mount can as that opens up in future fitting a different telescope to it.

The Virtuoso comes with either a 90Mak or 114 Newt but this I guess is for the European market.

I just looked up that one, because I was unfamiliar with it, but yes it does seem to be the same thing. I also did see an option for a 114 newt on this same mount, and it was either the same price or real close to it, but I decided to go with the refractor for 2 reasons: I already have a 114mm newt (with a longer focal length) and I also want to be able to do some terretrial viewing from time to time, so I figured the refractor was the correct choice. :) 

I read the manual for that mount last night by chance and appears to be best of both, can be used manually or being on and with the controls. A clever dob base so practical on space :-)

YES! That was one of the selling points to me. I can still put it in manual mode and swing it around, looking at whatever there is to look at, terrestrially or up in the sky. I do plan on bringing it to the beach and looking at distant ships and probably even some military aircraft, whenever the local air force base has airshows, that kind of thing. I really felt like this would be a versatile scope that I would keep around for a long time, even though I'll be presumably buying several more to complement this one. :)

Low power wide field is its best application, It will be good on the brighter larger dso's, open clusters m42 and the like. you will see some banding and 4 moons on jupiter, the rings of saturn but not in great detail. And the moon. There is likely to be significant false colour off axis on bright objects but hopefully you should have some fun with it.

YAY, I'm very excited. One more day to wait! And also, it definitely seems like everyone agrees that this, being a wide field scope, will be well suited for looking at DSOs and open clusters. That's pretty cool to me! I kind of didn't want something that would just be good for looking at the moon. I feel good about my purchase, better than I did before. Thank you so much, everyone of you.

Everyone is so helpful here!!! :D

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I read last night a user saying that when they took time to align it carefully Saturn stayed in the eyepeice for 20 minutes and then they stopped counting. After 2 hours of use it then got a bit lost perhaps they just needed to turn off to reset it they thought but they packed up for home.

Be interesting to read your experience of it.

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Well I received the telescope last night and immediately took it outside and spent all night looking up through cloudy skies to see whatever could be seen! My first impression is that this thing is a bit heavier than I expected, but by no means what I would refer to as "heavy." It didn't take long to put it all together, and then I brought it outside. I couldn't align it because for whatever reason the DC power adapter wasn't delivered, as it is in a different shipment (different tracking number and everything), but I experienced just swinging it around, pointing, and looking through it. The sky was relatively hazy, and the only constellation I could see was Casseiopia's 5 major stars, but when I pointed up at it, I saw TONS of stars there! I was even able to see one of the messier objects up there in Casseiopia... I don't remember which one it is, but it's the one that looks triangular shaped. M103, I think? Anyway, I can't wait til tonight so I can practice aligning it and tracking something. I think I'm going to drive an hour outside of town to darker skies.

I feel like a kid on Christmas day! :D

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Well, I took it out to dark skies last night and I was amazed at what this telescope can see! :D

I had originally intended to align it and experiment with the tracking capability, but the sky was so filled with stars that I didn't want to waste any time, lol. So, I just began pointing and looking.

First of all, this telescope is excellent for that... for just pointing and looking. The red dot finder totally puts it in the right spot, and then it's very easy to manually pivot and rotate, to get it where you want it, and stay centered on the object of desire. I was using the maximum magnification that is available to me at the moment, which is 70x. This is via the use of a 2x barlow, and the 10mm EP. With this magnification, we were able to easily see Jupiter and 3 of its moons. Surprisingly, I was able to see 2 primary bands on Jupiter. It was relatively tiny to my pupil, yet it was fairly detailed, and I could detect a bit of an orangey color as well. Color me impressed!!

We also gazed at a few bright stars, such as Betelgeuse, which was cool. Attempted to find a few messier objects but I'm still a noob so that was unsuccessful, except for M103, and that's only because I now know where that one is.

Anyway, I'm very impressed with this telescope! Sure, the image of Jupiter isn't as large or detailed as I can get from the 112mm newtonian, but that thing isn't anywhere near as convenient to grab, transport, and operate as this one is. Plus, the wide field of view makes it super fun to just gaze through the eyepiece and scan the heavens, looking at all the stars that don't show up to the naked eye.

My wife even gave it the seal of approval, which is good because what's mine is hers, lol. :D

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Yep. That's how I was using it last night. No power, no batteries. Just pushing it around. It's a dobsonian style mount. :)

I just took it out for a lovely view of the crescent moon a minute ago. I am happy with this scope. Now I just need to build a dobsonian mount for the newtonian and I'll be on my way!

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I swear I already posted a response to your question, Naemeth, so I don't know what happened. I'm thinking my post got removed, but for the life of me I don't know why. I know for a fact I hit the "post" button... oh well, here it is again...

I am very new to this, so I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer that, since I don't really know much about chromatic aberration in the first place. I can tell you that when I was looking at the Pleiades, as beautiful and bejewelled as they were in my eyepiece, the surrounding stars in the fringes looked like commas, or apostrophes. That's CA, right? Also, when I was looking at the half moon, it was very bright, and there was a purple-ish halo around the bright half. But honestly, the view seems very good to me, so I think it's safe to say this is not a "toy" telescope. When I was looking at Jupiter, with its moons, I found it to be very clear. Just, extremely clear. Also, the few bright stars I've looked at have been perfect pinpoints of light. Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Vega come to mind at the moment... they were absolutely amazing to look at.

I still haven't been able to test out the tracking capabilities of the scope yet. I hope to be able to point it at Jupiter tonight and track it, as long as I am able to find a spot where I can see Polaris, so I can align.

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Hi to you in Florida.   The key to using a small scope (or ANY scope) is patience.  Learn what all the buttons do, read the manual with the scope in front of you during the day.

Many scopes with electronics can act up in cold conditions when the batteries are not fresh, so keep a stock of spares on hand, or perhaps consider a separate rechargeable power pack.

No telescope will show stuff like the pics in magazines, books or online, so it's about managing expectations.

Very few of us have exhausted what a small scope will do.   With a bit of input from yourself, many great nights under the stars await  :smiley:

Good luck !!  Ed.

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Well last night I was able to test the auto tracking abilities of this thing. It worked!

I was unable to find a spot on my property where I could see polaris, so I couldn't align the scope visually to it. But I thought, wth, I know my latitude, and I have a compass, so I dialed in 28* on the alt, and aligned the azi to due north. Then, just out of curiosity, I opened Google Sky Map on my Android and placed it flat against the telescope, aimed at where the telescope was aimed, and sure enough polaris was right smack in the center.

So then I turned on the power and aimed it at the moon. I had it on 35x so the moon would fit in the field of view. I centered it, and I walked away. I did some important things, like pour myself a glass of wine, play with my cats a little.. Then like 10 minutes later I came back to the scope, and the moon was still there. It was slightly off center, but that was probably because of how big it is, coupled with the lack of a precise alignment.

So I pointed at Jupiter, which was finally high enough in the sky at this point. I bumped up to 70x, centered Jupiter, and walked away. This time I came back and checked the view every 5 minutes, and sure enough, it was still there! After about 15 minutes it was slightly of center, but a quick press of one of the slew buttons was all I needed to center it again. After about 45 minutes of this, and only having to recenter twice, I was tired and packed up for bedtime.

I am happily amazed by the tracking abilities. That was really one of the main reasons for buying this one, so I'm satisfied. Now, when in dark skies, I will be able to spend less time keeping things in the field of view, and more time observing them.

This is exactly what I needed to keep me interested, and so that I can start learning what's up there and where things are.

:)

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This is exactly what I needed to keep me interested, and so that I can start learning what's up there and where things are.

:)

And that's exactly what I need too, in just about any hobby.  It's so easy to get bogged down in complications and things that turn it into a chore.

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  • 3 weeks later...

And that's exactly what I need too, in just about any hobby.  It's so easy to get bogged down in complications and things that turn it into a chore.

Thats why my 200p astrophotography kit is in storage at the mo and a Virtuoso 90mm mak is on its way.

Getting back to the simpler things where justing looking around the skies is a pleasure rather than worrying about precide alignment and focus.

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  • 1 month later...

I agree with your comment as well, a light small scope is a well used one.  My 90mm Mak goes anywhere and its not a chore to bring it out and use it. It is helpfull to have a nice small heavy table you leave out to have available. (and a stool which you can just carry)  You will find its great by night and day, and a joy to use because its easy to set up. You can even put a few marks (or tape) on the table  matching your mount, to align up with polaris so you don't even have to worry about alignment from then on, just line up the marks when you set down the scope.

Have fun with it.

Phil

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I was looking at this mount in a bit more detail online, it appears to have a standard vixen dovetail fitting, that means you should be able to fit any scope that is small enough to fit.  You could try out a Mak which will give higher magnification with a narrower field of view (better for planets and smaller DSOs), and may be more forgiving of your eyepieces as Maks are usually a slower scope; something like the Mak 90 should fit if you get a dovetail bar for it (they usually attach to smaller scopes using 1/4 inch screws instead of scope rings).

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