Buy This, Not That! Celestron Edition.

hello and welcome back to this edition of buy this not that celestron edition i go through celestron's long history and pick the models i think are worth buying as well as the ones i think you should probably avoid so let's get started so celestron's one of the giants in our hobby needs certainly no introduction from me the company was started it is said when founder tom johnson was searching for a telescope to buy for his son but was dissatisfied with the models that were currently on the market so he built his own later he helped perfect a method for mass producing schmidt corrector plates at low cost and the schmidt casagrain was born so the first model 2i is of course the c8 of course the c8 is celestron it's their classic model the only real debate is which version do you buy do you get the old ones or do you get the new ones you'll find a lot of debate i don't think it really matters which version you get as long as the sample that you buy is a good one i think i have a mild preference for the new one simply because they're new and there again there were so many different versions of these i can't possibly go through them all here i did go through a list of all of the variations on the c8 on scope reviews i will link that below there are several different models and i you know i think i even missed a couple of them despite how long that article is and by the way the recommendation applies to all of the modern celestron schmidt cassergrain sizes the c5 the six the eight the nine and a quarter the 11 and the 14. and in fact with the exception of possibly the six each one of those has a legacy and a fan club of its own the five went aboard the space shuttle atlantis in the early 1990s boy did celestron get a lot of mileage out of that one advertising wise the sixth the only reason probably it doesn't have a big legacy right now is it hasn't been around long enough the eight of course is the eight that's the classic celestron the nine and a quarter is probably my favorite schmidt cassegrain of all time i have a separate video devoted just to that model i remember when the 11 came out the 11 was a sort of a miniature substitute for the c14 who didn't want to deal with the 14 and many people have a saying that the c11 is the c14 that you always wanted and as for the 14 you know what can i say it's so iconic so much personality so much charm and a schmidt cassegrain which is pretty rare i had one of those ones it was too big for me and i sold it having said that i kind of miss it maybe i'll get one of those again another day and come up with a semi-permanent solution like a rolling dolly or something if you're fortunate enough to have a permanent observatory i'm jealous anyway all the modern versions again recommended you just pick the one that suits your lifestyle and your budget for most people the sweet spot is the c8 so in searching for models that i would not recommend there actually haven't been that many i think celestron has done a pretty good job of staying in their lane they know who they are there is schmidt cassegrain company and they dabble in some of the other designs when they've needed to fill in a gap in their product line they have brand labeled or partnered with other manufacturers i think for them that's probably a good idea but there are a couple of models that you might want to be aware of and the first one is celestron c90 maxitos from the early 1980s i think they were trying to fill in the product line below the c5 with mixed results these things don't have a very good reputation i don't think the 0.965 inch eyepiece has helped there were at least three different versions there was a telephoto lens a spotting scope and an astro version with a single lighted sided swing arm and a motor drive base that was ac you can recognize these because they focused by turning the barrel some of them were black and some of them were orange it didn't help that these telescopes were around in the hyperinflationary early to mid 1980s the astro version at the time sold for 550. that's over fifteen hundred dollars today in two thousand twenty one dollars so again these are telescopes that you probably want to avoid having said that i do know that there are people out there who collect these things not necessarily because they're good but because you know they're capturing nostalgia or because they're just a piece of our history here's a picture of a small collection from a club member who picks these things up if you're eagle-eyed you may be able to spot at the bottom that is a coulter four inch collapsible newtonian another telescope from that early 1980s era that wasn't that good but anyway very often you don't set out to collect these things what happens is you're at an estate sale or you see one online and you pick one up and it doesn't cost very much and then a short time later you're in a thrift shop or something and you see another one the next thing you know you got a collection not to be confused with the older versions the new c90s they're black or at least the ones i've seen are black are quite good in fact this model made my list of the top five underrated and overlooked telescopes seek those out much better than the older versions so another example of a celestron telescope to buy is vixen branded high-end refractors mainly from the 1990s these can be hard to identify because they weren't really talking as to who was making what for whom but there are a couple of models that are very desirable and they are both four inch apo type refractors one is a c102ed with ed glass and even more desirable is the c102f the fluorite version if you can find one of those in good condition at a good price you might want to snap one of those up there are people who feel today that those are some of the finest examples of foreign refractors ever made and there are other models as well too many to name here one other one i want to mention is the gpc 102 that is the four-inch f 8.8 acromat on a great polaris mount yes it's an achromat but within that limitation very desirable very collectible telescopes again if you can find one in good condition at a reasonable price you might want to consider snapping that up so another example of a celestron telescope not to buy is 1980s era halley's comet edition telescopes from celestron i don't know what happened here but it seemed as though celestron was intent on slapping the word comet on every crappy telescope in their lineup and there were quite a few of these there were some really bad schmidt newtonians and cheap refractors this was bad on any number of fronts not the least of which is the fact that by today's standards halley's comet in the 1986 version was considered something of a minor bust seeing them through bad telescopes only made it worse and in fact celestron today even acknowledges that they had over committed their resources on this idea of the comet series refractors and even overestimated public interest in astronomy after the disappearance of the comet to the point where the company began to have some financial trouble in the early 1990s those of you with long memories may recall there was actually a merger proposed between celestron and meade at the time the united states government disallowed it on the grounds that it would form a monopoly i think that was probably the right decision celestron and mead were allowed to sort of find their own way and their own personalities afterwards and it was also good for the consumer because they had more choices now every once in a while someone will point out a comet series refractor from that era that isn't all that bad it's usually a refractor of some kind they're pretty rare so i'm just going to go ahead and paint this one with a broad brush and say don't buy any comet series refractors from the mid to late 1980s another example of a celestron telescope not to buy are inexpensive scopes with the 0.965 inch eyepieces or visual backs this is a standard recommendation for all brands not just celestron you know in researching this i think my recollection is that there were more of these than there actually were and i think my perception may have been skewed because of the number of cheap telescopes that people have brought to me over the years so many of these had the first scope moniker there actually weren't that many of them but you do see them pop up on craigslist and in thrift shops now another example of a celestron telescope two-by is celestron star hopper dobsonians now these weren't really remarkable in any way they're on this list for one reason and that's because when they do come up for sale they do tend to be very cheap so you can pick one of these things up for very little money usually mid 1990s to mid 2000s and they had a full line from four and a half inch all the way up to a giant 17 and a half inch version i don't know what was going on here they were the designs were different the four and a half inches probably the least desirable of them they had a single stock sort of mount on it it wasn't very stable the sixes and the eights were interesting they had aluminum or some sort of a metal side bearing system that was mounted on a rail so you could slide the tube back and forth to adjust for balance many dopp issues are balance issues and this is a clever way to sort of get around that once you got above the eight inch level they can be converted back to a sort of a conventional arrangement confusing the matter even further there were at least two different lines of these the early ones tended to have sonotube and the newer versions had aluminum tubes or metal tubes and they had this sort of a screw-in handle thing on the side i actually like the old system better i have the 12-inch newer version of the star hopper right now i don't think the altitude bearing system is all that great those little screw-in handles they don't seem to ever have the right tension and they seem to poke you in the dark all the time but anyway they do come up for sale from time to time and they are quite attractively priced people who like big telescopes are going to be very happy with that 17 and a half inch they're pretty rare but again when they come on the market they are very cheap i've seen those 17 and a half inch star hoppers and their spiritual cousins the mead 16-inch star finder dobsonians selling for less than the cost of an 8-inch and it's not that they're worth less than an 8-inch it's just that usually the scenario is somebody gets very ambitious and buys one of those things they use it for a while and then it sits in the garage for a long time 10 years or more is not uncommon until somebody a significant other comes along and says get that thing out of here and in fact in our club recently there have been at least two mead 16 inch starfighter dobsonians that have taken place at a transaction price of of zero that is they gave them away i'm not saying it's going to happen to you but keep an eye out if you like big dobs if you don't mind hauling them around keep an eye out so another example of a celestron product that i would say to buy is a mount and that is the cg5 and avx duo the avx is the newer version so a couple of caveats here these are definite purpose computers computers glitch they fail every once in a while somebody will write me that they bought one of these and it just doesn't work at all yes it happens so the question is do these things happen with the celestrons any more or less than the other manufacturers and having seen a lot of mounts now i would have to say the answer is probably no i think they're all about the same you keep using them as they age eventually something's going to go a little bit screwy on you i've saved i've said this before i on my avx's i have to do a factory reset on them you know about once a year or so and every once in a while i'll have to do a firmware update when something starts going a little bit uh odd there with them so that's one caveat the other caveat is to watch the payload limit keep it you know reasonable i've seen weight claims on the cg5 the cg5 here on the avx of 30 to 35 pounds i wouldn't go anywhere near it i put a takahashi fs102 fully loaded on one of these it weighs 14 to 15 pounds that's probably about the most i'd want to see put on one of these things a fully loaded c8 also about the same weight again works very well on that mount that's why you see so many c8s on cg5s and avxs the third thing is there is a bit of a learning curve if you're new to the hobby and you have to learn the night sky and you have to learn how to use a telescope and you have to learn how to see adding an operating system on top of it can be a little bit overwhelming and i have seen cases even recently where people have dropped out of the hobby because they couldn't master them out so if you can get past those three things the learning curve keep the payload limit reasonable and the fact that they will glitch every once in a while the celestron c5 cg5 and avx right now are my favorite mid-class mounts the operating system makes sense they do a good job of keeping up with the firmware one feature i really like on these is the ability to add at least in my firmware versions up to four additional calibration stars in addition to the two that you align to begin with giving you in essence a six star alignment things get very accurate when you have six stars this is important if you're imaging something because eventually you're going to be wanting to take an image of something that you can't see you are dependent upon the computer but again a solid recommendation for these mounts so staying with the theme of the mounts an example of a celestron mount not to buy is celestron cge i have one of these you've seen them in my videos you know it's based on the laws mandy g11 it even uses a lot of g11 parts i've actually swapped parts between mine and a friend's g11 when he needed them the lost mandy g11 is one of my favorite mounts of all time so if the g11 is one of my favorite mounts and this thing uses a lot of the same parts why am i saying stay away from this one well if you own one of these you know what i'm about to say so when customizing the cge for celestron ease they change the cabling arrangement between the ra and the deck i don't know why they didn't just use the loz mandy right ascension and deck cablings it was fine but they use the sort of thick cables with the different kind of connectors and mine has this thing called the runaway mount problem this is a known issue and it is exactly the way i describe it you'll be standing there and everything will be fine and suddenly the mount will just start running away from you this could be quite disconcerting if you're not prepared for it but now it happens so much with mine that i actually sit there and i have to watch it and i actually start expecting it this is a real annoyance because if you think about it i can never leave the telescope unattended on that mount i can't go inside i can't go visit somebody else it may start running by itself and things can start running into other things and stuff can get damaged now there is a fix for this several amateurs have come up with their own independent fixes but the one that's used the most often is what is referred to as the gary bennett mod and what gary has done is he has come up with a method for retrofitting the cables with this industrial sort of cabling system and the problem goes away so why haven't i done this to mine well if you look on gary bennett's website depending on how much of it you want him to do for you this mod can cost upwards of five hundred dollars yes that's for two cables so right now i can't decide if i just want to go all in on this mount or if i want to just move on now i'm going to close with something that is neither a buy nor a not buy because i can't figure it out right now and these are original celestron schmidt cassergrain's pre-orange tube now these were the white tube ones with the blue accents ironically the color scheme looks kind of like the meads nowadays but these were the original schmidt cassegrains before they settled on the modern versions and they had weird apertures at least for celestron standards there was a 10 there was a 16 there was a 22. so the reason i can't decide is these do come up for sale from time to time they're pretty rare but at least as of the time of filming right now they don't seem to be going for that much money so the demand is low but the supply is low so right now the prices are kind of reasonable the question is will these things become valuable in the future and i just don't know so that calls on you so there you have it a brief list of celestron telescopes that i think you should buy as well as the ones i think you should probably avoid what do you think did i miss one in one category or another let us know thanks for watching and i'll see you soon

Channel: Ed Ting

Views: 165,927

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Id: YfQ2nYrOxtc

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021