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As I've posted about in the past, I was interested in astronomy in my early years and even was involved in a Boys' Club in Oregon for building your own telescope. We worked on making our own mirrors; first grinding and polishing the glass, then sending them out for "silvering." Mine was the only one that didn't come back from that, so I didn't finish it. I think the Men in Black took it because it was so good — I would have seen their Lunar Max prison facility on the Moon where they were holding Boris the Animal.
In more recent years, I've been accumulating a variety of telescope brands, types, and sizes, mostly from thrift stores, etc. For these prices, I've been able to gather a pretty large variety and enjoy their different advantages versus what I could have afforded to buy at retail.
The latest is a very nice 8" Orion that I wound up getting last week for a little over $250 with tax. Amazing!
It's easy to think, just looking at photos without anything for size comparison, that even the smaller ones I've gotten — 90mm, 114mm, even the 130mm (the blue one) that got me a surprisingly nice photo of the moon — look fairly big. But in comparison to the Orion... nuh-uh.
I probably won't be taking it outside until things warm up, but now I start to giggle each time I see it/walk by it.
Here are a few of the reflector types I have:
They all have adjustable tripod leg extensions, as does the new one, although I can't imagine ever needing them. I left them all at regular height for easier comparison.
I believe the word is, "zoinks!"
The aforementioned moon photo:
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Nice pictures, K!
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The moon photo really surprised me, it was actually cloudy-wispy that night, but I must have caught it exactly between wisps.
That one telescope I got the photos with - the blue one in the photos - is a Meade Polaris 130, which has turned out to be one of my favorites so far. Up until the Orion 8" anyway. And I have another of the Polaris 130, mint condition in a nice carrying bag etc. I haven't tried it for anything yet, just keeping it nice for now. The one I got the photo with, is actually scratched/banged-up some on the outside, but apparently the innards are fine!
The Orion is 203mm, so that's about 50% larger in mirror diameter, but of course light-gathering is to the SQUARE of the radius. And the focal length is about double.
The Orion is also set up for 2" eyepieces, but I don't have any of those yet so I'll use the 1.25" adapter for now. But even without 2" eyepieces it should be amazing, when things get a bit warmer outside.
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Buy spare parts while you can still get them. Optronic Technologies, the parent company of Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Meade Instruments, closed its facilities and laid off all employees in July 2024, effectively shutting down both brands.
On the bright side, you might be in for some money from the settlement of a class-action lawsuit over price fixing.
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I figured that would make the 8" I got more expensive, but apparently not. I got a regular Newtonian with simple equatorial mount, not something like a Meade LX-90 which I'd also been looking for, because I didn't want to deal with proprietary motors and other electronics etc, even before the closure was announced. And if for some reason the Orion Skyview Pro mount ever fell apart, I can put the OTA on another mount.
But that mount is so sturdy, I doubt anything could hurt it much. It's all steel, not aluminum.
I've never bought any of these new, so I wouldn't qualify anyway. And I'm sure the $250 I paid is still way less than if I had somehow bought it new and then got a small settlement check in the mail.
Everything I need for it now is just 1.25" and 2" eyepieces, which are not proprietary.
And the photos here were just to illustrate the difference in size. I have several other reflector telescopes, and refractors too: Orion, Meade, Celestron, Baytronix, Twin Star, Bushnell, AmScope, Galileo, Venture...
Some of them still new-in-box.
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When you list Takahashi, Tele-Vue and Astro-Physics, I will know that you are really serious and not just obsessed.
I used to have the telescope bug too; my enthusiasm was dimmed by visual aberrations from cataract surgery, and I no longer observe. Here's my profile from AstroMart, where I have spent many pleasant hours wasting money in search of the perfect telescope.
"I'm a 68 year old father of five, with the good fortune to have re-married in 2015 after a decade as a widower. Also a retired gynecologist and hospital administrator, an amateur oboe player (another costly hobby!), a Covid and double cancer survivor--if my luck gets any better I'll buy a lottery ticket! I love my kids and my wife, classical music, apochromatic refractors and fresh seafood in roughly that order.
I got the astronomy bug when my late first wife gave me an Orion 5 inch "short-tube" Newt for Christmas in 1999. I was introduced to fine apos at an Arizona star party in 2003 and joined AMart a few months later. For some years I collected first-quality scopes like a madman, my collection maxed out at 17, mostly apos. I have slimmed this down in response to the demands of life.
Skies were fair in my part of Massachusetts but have gotten notably worse; the opening of a casino in Springfield has not helped. Having a small roll-off observatory was a great boon to my observing; I could go out, observe two objects and be back in in 20 minutes. In the roll-off are an AP900 bearing an Astro-Physics 130 f/8.35 (the second best telescope I have ever owned) and a Televue 85. How odd it is to be using the Televue as a finderscope. I have a Traveler for taking on trips and a Stowaway that I am too afraid to scratch, to take out of the case.
A slightly misplaced replacement lens from cataract surgery leaves me with visual aberrations on bright point objects and has affected my observing.
When it's sunny, sometimes I'll put on a Coronado 60 Solar telescope which I had bought as a gift for my late first wife, it's a particularly sweet example. I also own an old Q 3.5 with a nice solar filter, also Barry Goldwater's Questar (more for novelty than for astronomy).
Wanna get on my good side? Buy me some sushi, come to a concert with me, compliment one of my children, or come over and observe some night."
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