Considering an Achromat Celestron 6"

[Gonariu]

I imagine that the old Celestrons like them, they were made in the USA, but today they are made in China!

[SthBohemia]

32 minutes ago, Gonariu said:

I imagine that the old Celestrons like them, they were made in the USA, but today they are made in China!

The link below provides some history of Celestron, in particular WHICH Celestron scopes to either 'lookout for, or to avoid'. Celestron quality underwent a sharp decline during the mid 80's with the Halleys comet advent, and fell totally flat on its face when taken over by Tasco (does Tasco qualify as the producer of the WORST telescopes ever made?).....

http://www.company7.com/celestron/index.html

....."Efforts by Celestron to take in the comments of the meeting in 1987 produced what are fundamentally two of the best engineered 8 inch SCT made in the 20th centruy: the Ultima 8 and the Utima 8 PEC. These reliable telescopes featured comparatively massive Fork Mounts incorporating large bearings and a precision Byers worm gear drive set. The Ultima 8 base housed two cylindrical rechargeable lead acid batteries; this was a product first offered by Roger Tuthill as a retrofit for older telescopes. These telescopes had the capability to operate off external 12 volts DC sources, a wonderfully rigid and easy to adjust Equatorial Wedge. And yes, it had carrying handles on the Fork Tines and hand control knobs that could be operated even when wearing gloves. The provided 50mm Finder and the hard shell but light weight carrying case are still missed by us who recall these telescopes. The Ultima 8 PEC followed with some improvements, including the capability to operate off an internal 9 volt battery that is easy to find in stores, but not changed as easily as we'd like in a cold dark night.

[Zeta Reticulan]

I thought Celestron SCT's were made by Synta now. 

[SthBohemia]

40 minutes ago, Zeta Reticulan said:

Synta now. 

In 2005 the Suzhou Synta giant underground factory purchased Celestron under the name of another giant underground robot factory SW technology (both may be named as different factories but as you know they are ALL part and parcel of ONE great big Chinese underground factory which makes ALL the astro gear and cheap wooden particle board 'student desks)! This occurred because the Tesco sideline of the named factories somehow managed to make a total mess of the Celestron assembly conveyer belt!

The mid to late 90's was carnival time for Meade, they were improving optics and were happily rubbing Celestrons face in a very muddy puddle!

Summation-

Celestrons until 1984 (Oranges) Good-Very Good-Amazing...

Celestrons and Meades 1984-1989  😞 😞 avoid due to Lemon season....

Celestrons 1990-98 Problems with quality control. Pot luck.

Celestrons 1998-2005 Tasco rotten Lemon season, avoid like the plague 😞

Edited August 4, 2022 by SthBohemia

[Zeta Reticulan]

1 minute ago, SthBohemia said:

In 2005 the Suzhou Synta giant underground factory purchased Celestron under the name of another giant underground robot factory SW technology (both may be named as different factories but as you know they are ALL part and parcel of ONE great big Chinese underground factory which makes ALL the astro gear and cheap wooden particle board 'student desks)! This occurred because the Tesco sideline of the named factories somehow managed to make a total mess of the Celestron assembly conveyer belt!

The mid to late 90's was carnival time for Meade, they were improving optics and were happily rubbing Celestrons face in a very muddy puddle!

That's what I thought.

[Gonariu]

23 hours ago, SthBohemia said:

The link below provides some history of Celestron, in particular WHICH Celestron scopes to either 'lookout for, or to avoid'. Celestron quality underwent a sharp decline during the mid 80's with the Halleys comet advent, and fell totally flat on its face when taken over by Tasco (does Tasco qualify as the producer of the WORST telescopes ever made?).....

http://www.company7.com/celestron/index.html

The history of Celestron is interesting, I did not know that once it had even produced a 22 "SCT! A few years ago I had heard of the crisis period of the company which in terms of product quality had been surpassed by Meade, however it seems to me that currently the SCTs which produces are good telescopes, I had a CPC 8 (stolen from me by thieves 10 years ago) and a Nexstar 8 SE (the one I currently have).

[SthBohemia]

9 minutes ago, Gonariu said:

Nexstar 8 SE

How do you find the single arm mounting on the Nexstar compared to the CPC fork? The single arm has always looked somewhat unstable to me... I modified a CPC so I can place a refractor stably on it, I guess the a single arm Nexstar could be modified quite easily as well to carry other scopes 🙂 

[Gonariu]

20 minutes ago, SthBohemia said:

How do you find the single arm mounting on the Nexstar compared to the CPC fork? The single arm has always looked somewhat unstable to me... I modified a CPC so I can place a refractor stably on it, I guess the a single arm Nexstar could be modified quite easily as well to carry other scopes 🙂 

Actually the single-arm mount is not so stable, let's say that for a visual observation it is sufficient; I want to see how it behaves by connecting the SV 305 planetary camera to it. I also tried the Nexstar 6 SE as I bought it from the school where I teach, for a 6 "SCT lens the Nexstar mount is fine, for the 8" we are at the limit. To put a refractor a couple of months ago I put my achromatic 120/600 without any problem as it has the Vixen bar; however, they advised me not to connect the Vixen 102-M (achromatic 102/1000) because I could have ruined the mount (will it be due to the greater leverage effect?). For the assembly no problem at all, indeed I will tell you that the Nexstar is more transportable than the CPC both for the lower weight and for the fact that the lens and the mount are not a single block, in my car I carry it better.

[SthBohemia]

11 minutes ago, Gonariu said:

the single-arm mount is not so stable,

Thank you for confirming what I have always suspected regarding the single arm mounts. I imagine they were introduced simply as a cost cutting measure. 

....."will it be due to the greater leverage effect?" Probably, the single arm system looks as if everything is under stress as there is no balance achieved, there would be quite a bit of stress with a heavy long scope on the top and base of the arm....

A Nexstar mount on an equatorial wedge (to me) would be an accident waiting to occur. I would not even place a CPC on a wedge in regard to what I mount on top of the fork. Perfectly stable as alt/alm configuration as all weight is directly focused downward.

The old Celestron Ultima mount is a different matter, it is massive, and to me, the best mount Celestron ever made 🙂 Not exactly what most want these days as no GOTO and totally lacking any 'fancy' bells and whistles. As imaging is of no real interest ( I am almost as old as Rameses II and find 'photoshop' some sort of strange alien product) the mount suits my purposes!

 🙂 2 oldish Celestron forks and have never owned a Celestron scope, Meade SCT on the oppositions fork... Meade never seemed to be able to make a decent mount.. sighs

[Blueboy]

On 03/08/2022 at 09:41, SthBohemia said:

Need another scope to play around with? I found this while flicking through Ebay!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234634595217?hash=item36a14fcb91:g:iNUAAOSwsalis13T

An ORANGE tube Celestron from the years when they actually cared about what they sold, added attraction- Made in USA! Ultima mount with the 7.5" Byers worm/wheel!!

Made the guy an offer but apparently he wants to hold out for the BIG bucks. 🤑