Opinions from the experts please

[ZeroID]

1970's Orange Celestron 8 telescope
What does anyone know about these for optical quality ? Spotted one for sale and contemplating buying it for an astrograph on the EQ6.
Auction finishes Tuesday evening so quick answers appreciated.

[astroron]

Optical Quality is good but no starbright coatings like the modern Celestrons .
They where a very good scope in their day:thumbsup:
Probably not compete with a modern SCT because of not having the coatings :shrug:

[asimov]

The best SCT I've ever used (for optical quality) was an orange tubed 8" SCT. That's not to say all of them ever produced where like this..I never found the lack of modern coatings to be a concern.

[ZeroID]

Thanks, I'm going to go for it as far as the budget will allow. Cloudy Nights gives them a good for their time rating also with some mixed performance depending on how lucky you were with the optics.

[casstony]

The newer Celestrons coming out of China are very good optically. I'd only get the orange tube if it was cheap and in great condition - no mould, etc.

[ZeroID]

1975 with Multicoated optics. Currently it is very cheap although has not reached reserve. I missed out on a better one a week ago for $601.00 with early goto mount. Hopefully this will not reach that price. Mount is home made fork but I want to put it on the EQ6 as an astrograph so that is not an issue.

[ZeroID]

Well that was a swizz ! :shrug:
It went all the way to $905.00 and didn't even make reserve. Should have been more agro on the $601.00 example last week. Just shows you doesn't it.

Back to the drawing board .... :confused2:

[toc]

Keep at it - I got a late 90's one (had fastar) for about 450USD about 8 or 9 years ago. (astromart) The OTA was a bit scratched, but the optics have been fine.