Alibaba has a plethora of serious-looking telescopes produced by names nobody in the rest of the world has ever heard of and I’m wondering why.
Take for example this 6” refractor for under $1000!
https://m.alibaba.com/product/608260...specifications
To all intents and purposes it looks exactly the same as any you’d find advertised in the rest of the world for many times that amount. In the days when Roland Christian was making lenses using rare unicorn’s toenails and other secret ingredients it was easy to argue cheap stuff is rubbish. Today however? Everything is made by computer and even cheap optics outperform incredibly expensive optics of yesteryear, save for a few celebrated examples.
The link is for a telescope made by “ Dovoll”. Ever heard of them? Nor me and apparently nor has the whole of the Internet!
Being cynical I might suggest we all know their telescopes extremely well but we know them by brand names we recognise.
Does anyone have any actual information or evidence to support my cynicism?