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 In
February 1997, I bought my Celestron®
Celestar-8® Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) from a shop in Sydney,
Australia. The telescope was my first 'serious' telescope and cost me a
cool A$2,500 (~US$1,750).
I
chose the SCT over a Newtonian telescope because of its compactness, and
the large number of accessories available. The SCT's aperture-to-weight
ratio is excellent. This is important to me since I do not enjoy weight-
Almost three and a half years now, I have had many great observation sessions using the telescope. I attended my first star party with the telescope in 1997, as well as using it to observe the famous comet Hale-Bopp. In general, I am very satisfied with the telescope, both optically and mechanically. Everything works as expected and still working well. The first problem I discovered after the first observation with the SCT was dew! Dew can form on the front corrector really fast! On the following day I rushed to the shop to get the Celestron® Dew Shield. The other complaint I have is the Celestar-8® suffers from the 'mirror-shift' problem that associates with most of the Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes. The main mirror wobbles slightly when it is being pushed forward or pulled backward during focusing. At high power (~400x) the centred object may shift out of view completely. |
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Click on the thumbnails below to see larger pictures.
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