Celestron starpointer pro

[Ju Piter]

Hi again everyone,my new finder arrived today as stated above,this is a great finder which unlike most red dot finders is not a red dot it has the same 2 circles as my rigel finder but goes alot brighter so i can align it during the day,it is all plastic but feels very well made,it is very light at 5oz,142g which is great for balance with my 130p-ds on my heritage mount, it also has a 40mm viewing window which is so much easier to see the reticles,at £29 it is also cheaper than a telrad or rigel and to me looks so much better.i have posted a couple of photos of it next to my other finders for scale and on my ota.rigel,telrad or this the choice is yours but imho this is a great finder.

Edited September 24, 2015 by Ju Piter

[laudropb]

There was a review on here lately which did not rate this finder highly. Have you used it at night yet? I find that finders are often a very personal choice. I love my Rigel, but others do not. Thanks for posting.

Edited September 24, 2015 by laudropb

[Ju Piter]

There was a review on here lately which did not rate this finder highly. Have you used it at night yet? I find that finders are often a very personal choice. I love my Rigel, but others do not. Thanks for posting.

just arrived today so not tried it at night but it is easier to see the reticles easier to align and brighter than my rigel.i only use the reticle finders now for finding objects i dont even use my raci.

[Fozzie]

i only use the reticle finders now for finding objects i dont even use my raci.

Snap.. couple with a nice wide field EP and your on for a winner..

Great collection, I was toying with the idea of using a metal base on the star pointer pro as opposed to the plastic one, I notice your "lowest" finder in the picture has one similar to the one I was thinking off, are they interchangeable and if so, do you think it adds anything to the stability..?

I find that finders are often a very personal choice. I love my Rigel, but others do not. Thanks for posting.

I'd agree with that..

Ta

Fozzie

[sdkfz181]

Ok Neil, thank you, that was the answer I was hoping for.

[Ju Piter]

Snap.. couple with a nice wide field EP and your on for a winner..

Great collection, I was toying with the idea of using a metal base on the star pointer pro as opposed to the plastic one, I notice your "lowest" finder in the picture has one similar to the one I was thinking off, are they interchangeable and if so, do you think it adds anything to the stability..?

I'd agree with that..

Ta

Fozzie

Hi fozzie yes i have put the metal dovetail base on and it has made it so much more rigid.i do not like that multi reticle finder anyway there is not enough movement lett and right to align it without putting the finder shoe at an angle,they are made for gun sights and thats were they should stay

[Fozzie]

Thanks Neil, good to know...

Ta

Fozzie

[Alma]

Just reviving this thread in case anyone's considering buying a Starpointer Pro.   Mine lasted precisely two gentle outings before the tiny mask which produces the 2 ring reticle pattern fell off and disappeared.  Now I'm left with a nasty red blob which fills most of the screen and is of no use to man or beast.  

The design concept is OK but the "astronomers" who allegedly designed this thing must have torn their hair out when they saw how cheaply it was being manufactured.  

Made to an unacceptably low price point i.m.h.o. which just goes to prove that you only get what you pay for in this hobby.    Total waste of money. 

Edited June 11, 2016 by Alma
Spelling

[Knighty2112]

Just ordered one, so will get it in a day or two. When viewing through the finder what distance apart are the circles? Are theyroughly half a degree apart, one degree or what? 

[Cosmic Geoff]

Thought it worth refreshing this thread, as I bought one and it was DOA.  With the button cell fitted (plus side outwards) it would not turn on.  Not an unique experience, apparently.

I could see that the negative contact, a flat disk, was flush with the surrounding insulation, which did not look good. Obviously the central disk needs to be higher than the insulation so that the flat button cell will make proper contact.

I did not want to send it back, which would have been a problem anyway as I am self isolating.  So I fixed a small piece of folded aluminium foil over the central contact, securing it with a small piece of sticky tape extending to one side.  Now the device turns on OK.

As some have commented, the circles are rather too bright.

[denodan]

There are good and bad in everything. Have heard lots of issues with talked also. Just because a few get a bad experience does not mean rubbish. You can buy something with a good reputation and get a bad one. I hate telrad, to big, bulky and look homemade. Poor battery compartment is very amature like, not professional at all. I like the starpointer pro and a good in-between telrad which is high and rigel one. I perfer the much smaller footprint of starlointer pro.

These days people buying a product, have an issue and claim rubbish.

I have a Lunt 70mm ED refractor, f6. Known to be great quailty and highly praised. Had lots of issues, screws missing, not dont up tight, objective lens miles out of collimation, sent Lunt back the objective to get it recollected, all fixed and now a great scope. One bad egg does not mean all bad

[Sunshine]

My experience with the Star Pointer Pro was not what I expected, I found it to be flimsy, moving out of alignment with the slightest touch. Unfortunately, tightening up the screws in an attempt to make it more rigid gave me the impression it was going to shatter like egg shells so I tried using it as is but, a breeze would move it out of alignment.  After a few tries I removed it.  As for the Telrad, yes it is ugly and grossly oversized but, It works flawlessly and, I could fight off an attacking bear with it.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Sunshine

[denodan]

Sound like you got a dud to me. Telrad are just to big for an SCT, apart from the bigger scopes  frankly look so stupid on an 8" sct or even a 9.25. The foot print is miles to big, ugly and stupid when a red dot finder basically does the same job. Using the standard red dot finder with my 9.25, compliments my 9×50 right angle celestron finder. The red dot finder not fansy works well. Its only for basic star alighment and gets the job done. Don't need much to just get a star aligh so why a stupid looking overkill monster? It does not really need to be that large? Why it is beats me. The battery compartment is very poor, 2 bits of foam rubber is very poor.

Have heard of issues with Telrad also broken battery wires, glass falling out, switch breaking.

In every brand its a gamble if you get a good one or bad one. Which is why you have a warranty 

[Alma]

On 10/02/2021 at 19:10, denodan said:

Sound like you got a dud to me. Telrad are just to big for an SCT, apart from the bigger scopes  frankly look so stupid on an 8" sct or even a 9.25. The foot print is miles to big, ugly and stupid when a red dot finder basically does the same job. Using the standard red dot finder with my 9.25, compliments my 9×50 right angle celestron finder. The red dot finder not fansy works well. Its only for basic star alighment and gets the job done. Don't need much to just get a star aligh so why a stupid looking overkill monster? It does not really need to be that large? Why it is beats me. The battery compartment is very poor, 2 bits of foam rubber is very poor.

Have heard of issues with Telrad also broken battery wires, glass falling out, switch breaking.

In every brand its a gamble if you get a good one or bad one. Which is why you have a warranty 

I have to say I agree with this.  People go on about Telrads like they’re the best thing since sliced bread, but open it up and there’s nothing inside that ugly box - just a bit of cheap looking wiring.     I bought one some time ago and it failed after about 2 years.  So, stupidly, I bought another one.  That lasted about 8 months. Same thing.    Now I’m not rough with my equipment by any means and I looked after them pretty well but for the money these things cost one should expect much higher quality.      So, what I really want is that great Telrad reticle pattern in a new, better made, smarter looking, housing.  The Celestron StarPointer could have filled that role but is even cheaper than the Telrad.
 

[Sunshine]

Totally agree the Telrad is a hulking ugly brute of a finder but, it does the job and the reticle is perfect, I wish they would finally redesign it to be smaller and more aerodynamic.

[AlexK]

On 10/02/2021 at 11:10, denodan said:

Sound like you got a dud to me. Telrad are just to big for an SCT, apart from the bigger scopes  frankly look so stupid on an 8" sct or even a 9.25. The foot print is miles to big, ugly and stupid when a red dot finder basically does the same job. Using the standard red dot finder with my 9.25, compliments my 9×50 right angle celestron finder. The red dot finder not fansy works well. Its only for basic star alighment and gets the job done. Don't need much to just get a star aligh so why a stupid looking overkill monster? It does not really need to be that large? Why it is beats me. The battery compartment is very poor, 2 bits of foam rubber is very poor.

Have heard of issues with Telrad also broken battery wires, glass falling out, switch breaking.

In every brand its a gamble if you get a good one or bad one. Which is why you have a warranty 

Telrad is not just a glorified red dot finder despite the well known fact that 99.9% of amateurs are using it like the one. It's an ultimate pointing device not requiring a second optical finder or UWA pointing eyepiece to land the telescope FOV on your naked eye visible or invisible target from the first try. I'm pointing with it exclusively for 10+ years already (following the TPM method) and it takes me only 5-10 seconds(!) to move the 12" Dob to ANY target I see on my digital star chart. From the moment I tap it on the screen to the moment I'm already enjoying it in my 88x eyepiece. Every. Single. Time. Try that with any RDF or Rigel when that's an obscure lonely 14m galaxy in Cetus.

Its size is dictated by certain laws of optics. That's why it was the only trustable in immediate accuracy naked eye pointer for so many years (just until recently, as the QuInsight optics is even better). Because this is the only collimator on the market under $100 (before the QuInsight was invented) with the nearly zero parallax. That means that when it's used as a trivial RDF pointer, and is calibrated properly it allows me to point directly at planets and even guide the view (!) with a 800x magnification eyepiece (E3.7) + 2xBarlow. As the pointing accuracy with it can be 2-3 arc minutes (limited only by your eyesight). Thanks to the longer than other cheap RDFs focal range of the collimator lens and the flat beam splitter mirror instead of the concave reflex semi-transparent mirror off all RDFs (except for the Rigel). All smallish RDFs (except maybe the $400 TeleVue) have a bad parallax in vertical direction because their reticle is off axis in that direction. 

But in fact, Telrad's primary function is the indirect pointing. Which requires a reticle covering some surface of the sky (well known Telrad measuring rings) and always consistently. That even more demanding on the collimator's quality due to the spherical aberrations stepping into the game. Only when recent China economy advances allowed an affordable SA corrected aspherical duplet collimator mass-produced the QuInsight's expanded reticle became possible for a Telrad-like quality wide-field sighting and still well under $100.

The shape of the Telrad is not an ugly joke but the carefully considered highly functional multipurpose engineering design:

1. Many newbies often struggling with figuring where the telescope is ponting in the sky and even relatively to the compass points. The Telrad's large elongated body with right angle edges supposed to provide the miniature model of the telescope OTA functional geometry at hand (the eye comprehends straight lines and angles alignment in space better than any round 3D shapes) and it is also well aligned with its optical axis. So when you move your head to the position behind it, until you can't see its long body, the dimly lit reticle will be immediately visible in the beam-split mirror on the top (by the way, I'm shocked to read you want your RDF retice brighter! But then figuring you pointing to really uber bright stars and planets only with it, and seemingly don't care about your darkness adaptation at all).
2. The long Telrad mounting shoe matching its long body purpose is to provide the 100% reproducible 100% accurate clamping. So after aligning your Telrad once you don't have to re-align it again after removing. You can calculate it for yourself: the typical clamping shoe error it's arctg( 0.1 mm/Shoe length mm ). Not to mention, that it allows perfect shoe grip without drilling the expensive OTA for the mounting shoe. It's an instant nondestructive nonpermanent easily removable telescope pointing upgrade.
   (I'm also shocked to read you want to collimate your RDF in the day time, as at night it will be off due to the parallax and temperature drift no doubt, but then I understand that you can't point with it accurately due to the parallax and irregular dot shape blinding your eyes anyway, so you have to resort to some second stage pointing aid like an optical finder even if just an UWA EP).
3. The large Telrad's body allows it to fit not only widely available AA cells but also a larger collimator lens and a correspondingly larger beam splitting mirror, thus providing a huge unobstructed field of view compared to any trivial RDFs (but the QuInsight which has that feature improved all the way to perceiving its rings just flying in the open sky well above the UTA rim).
4. The large body height not only providing enough space for convenient collimation handscrews but also a natural riser. No need for flymsy stalks RDFs require most of the time.
5. I would also add the ease of batteries replacement in the dark (no flashlight required). But Telrad's power consumption is so small that I can barely recall ever replacing them actually (~6? 7 years ago?). For most RDFs it's a chore to fiddle with their coin batteries blindly.
6. Or it's DIY potential with plenty of space for additional controls, external connectors, and even microcontrollers.

But I feel for you, in Russia we have a saying: "The beauty demands sacrifices", which means : A pleasant decorative external outlook often means lacking of internal contents qualities. I'm personally barely see my Telrad in the dark, perhaps, because I'm usually observing in Bortle 1-3  

Edited February 12, 2021 by AlexK