Meade vs Celestron? NASA chooses!

[deanm]

Ah! The Everlasting Great Debate!

http://www.celestron.com/portal/articles/cat/press-releases/post/celestron-telescope-begins-terrestrial-observation-onboard-international-space-station/

Dean

[LewisM]

All it means is Celestron undercut Meade on price :)

NASA should be ashamed for buying a Chinese product to bear the NASA name.

[deanm]

I very much doubt that any money changed hands - in fact, if anything, you could imagine Celestron offering 'financial enhancements': the publicity generated is pure gold for them!

Dean

[MrB]

Maybe they thought Meade couldn't deliver (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=101988)?

Ooooo nasty :lol:

[LewisM]

Hang on, Meade is Hecho en México anyway, so neither are US made any more.

Should have chosen an AP or Televue refractor :) :D

[tlgerdes]

This is a marketing stunt, nothing more.

How many hi-res cameras do we already have orbiting the earth that can do it better? Look at the resolution we get from google earth (yes, it is getting a little dated), no way are they going to get better with the celestron.

Think about the sort of pictures we get from our community of the ISS through c11s, c14s and bigger, what is their resolution and FOV like? and all they get is a 925 with an F/L of 2300mm.

[deanm]

Later this year, an outfit call UrtheCast will contract the Russians to launch & fit 3 steerable HD cameras on the exterior of the ISS.

This will be a commercial venture, charging access time, so you could book your slot to film from orbit your carefully-timed outdoor wedding, son's footy game, natural disaster, etc. (Cloud insurance, anyone?!)

Resolution will be sub-meter range.

I'm still intrigued by the suggested pronunciation as "EarthCast" - it was clearly intended to be "U R the cast".

http://www.urthecast.com/

[StarVoyager]

NASA has used commercially available scopes on past missions and they have chosen Celestron before, their C5 Spotting scope had been on the shuttle many times: http://www.celestron.com/astronomy/celestron-c5-spotter.html (http://www.celestron.com/astronomy/celestron-c5-spotter.html).


I have my doubts that this is a marketing stunt. The cost per pound to orbit is about US$10,000 and the CPC 9.25 OTA is 58 pounds, so that’s around US$580,000 to send the scope up there! :eyepop: Assuming that Celestron has similar selling costs (which includes marketing) to what Meade has (http://www.meade.com/nasdaq/sec/Form_10-Q_Q3_FYE_2013.pdf (http://www.meade.com/nasdaq/sec/Form_10-Q_Q3_FYE_2013.pdf)) – US$560,000 – it would not make sense from a cost stand point to spend their entire marketing budget on one "campaign". So I assume that these scopes must be pretty effective experiment tools for NASA given the likely cost to the agency to launch them.

[Capricorn1(Tom)]

I agree with Dean and Anthony. See other links also (original link provided by Dean)

NASA.gov/mission_pages/servir/index.html (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/NASA.gov/mission_pages/servir/index.html)

www.servirglobal.net (http://www.servirglobal.net)

[cometcatcher]

Didi they get it specially made or just pick one from the store? :question:

"Oops, this store one is all blurry, have to send it back for refund." Wonder if they pay return postage? :P

[RelevantTheory]

Good point LewisM...it is a shame that business decisions such as moving a few kms (or a few thousand) down the road are too often guided by tariffs and taxes than productivity and quality.

[TechnoViking]

Celestron bashing thread ?
im sure the reasoning behind NASA selecting the 925OTA is due to the fact that the 925 is built in the exact same way as its larger and heavier siblings such as the c11 and c14, even the same parabolic angle of the main and secondary mirror are built and assembled the exact same way, the 925 is also half way between 8 and 11. The 925 also has 33% more light gathering ability than the 8 inch, and only a few extra pounds heavier.

Bash the company all you like (i often bash them on their Facebook page). But bashing a really nice SCT?

:mad2:

[Stardrifter_WA]

I can understand people having personal preferences, but it should be remember that without the Meade/Celestron competitiveness we simply wouldn't have such nice gear available today and at relatively inexpensive prices. Competition pushes innovation after all. Once upon a time, I couldn't even dream about buying an equatorial telescope, as they were so expensive. So ubiquitous are computer controlled goto telescopes today that some have forgotten, or simply don't even realise, how lucky we are to have such wonderfully advanced equipment.

I own a Celestron 8" Nextstar SCT. Is it the best telescope I have owned? No, it isn't now, but it was when I bought it, however, it is still a great telescope.

It was the best available at the time, price vs quality. But as time has gone by and my knowledge increased I came to understand the optical limitations of such systems. There are much better telescopes available, but they have the price tag to match and my bank account simply says no. :)

Do I still like the Celestron SCT, you bet, but I now like my FLT110 flourite better, but it isn't a fair comparison, as tastes change.

It all comes down to what we can afford and frankly, price vs quality of telescopes today is quite amazing really. We get so much more for our money.

So, I fail to see why there is such an argument as to what is better. They all are, each in there own way.

[AstroJunk]

I don't think anyone is bashing Celestron - Just gently ribbing the marketing of what superficially apears to be little more than a stunt. Poking an SCT through a window of a space station in low Earth orbit does seem a little 'Heath Robinson'.

HOWEVER (Dont flame me yet!) If you look at the telescope itself on the SERVIR site, you will notice that it has no attachements at the rear, and is focussed by moving the mirror not with a microfocusser. This means that what ever they are using to capture the image is attached to the front and probably running at f2. It may be a hyperstar setup or the camera may have a built in corrector, but Celestron are the only one out of the pair of SCT makers that offer the farstar interface out of the box and could provide a new scope without anyone making any mods.

Anyone seen a picture of the front?

[CometGuy]

The choice was based over the Hyperstar capability. See http://starizona.com/acb/hyperstar/ISS/index.html

David Levy also wrote an article in the US Sky and Tel recently about the Hypestar system going into orbit (I'm not sure if it got published though).

Terry

[AstroJunk]

Well spotted Terry, it all falls into place...