Celestron 80ED "Spotting scope"
This is a review of the Celestron 80ED "Spotter". I realize that this scope was reviewed on this site previously, but I have a LOT of spare pennies about, so I thought I would put in my two pennies worth.
As mentioned elsewhere, this scope in all probability shares the optical design with the Orion 80mm ED scope. Consequently, the optical performance SHOULD be identical, and while I have never had a chance to compare, others have, and indicate that they perform similarly.
I chose the Celestron version for two reasons. First, is price. It is not THAT much cheaper, but it does come with things that have to be purchased separately with the Orion version. Most notably, I comes with a clamshell type ring which has a cast-in dovetail (with ¼-20 hole making it suitable for camera tripod mounting). Next, add a finder, stalk, 25mm eyepiece, and spotter diagonal (erect image), and the value proposition does kind of tilt in favor or the Celestron (at least for me). I also prefer the balanced look, with the OTA tube being more proportionate to the size of the objective. Looks count to some (after all, I always picked beautiful women for all my wives - LOL) and yes they do count for me. The silver focus knobs, the flared lens shade, and the unusual, sculped focuser housing all work together to make this scope look rather unique, and I personally think that it is quite attractive. Fit and finish overall is very well done. Any by the way, the supplied Plossl was a 25mm, and rattled when you shook it. But tightening it up solved the problem, and it is a nice eyepiece, with a good magnification for this scope (24x).
Out of the box, my 80ED did showed the same blemish of the paint under the tube rings as mentioned by other reviews. The good news here is that I was able to polish them out (Ok, at least part of one of them just to test it) with Meguiar’s automotive paint polish. It only took a minor amount of rubbing with moderate pressure to eliminate the blemish. My suspision is that these little rascals are rolling off of the assembly line a bit to quick, and that the paint on the OTA is not fully cured when they are slapped in the box. The ring is TIGHT, so this is not caused by the ring slipping, but by the pressure of the ring clamped on the fresh paint. My guess anyway, but good news, it is an easy fix.
Now, this scope does NOT have the Crayford focuser and THAT is too bad. I prefer Crayford focusers. The focuser on this scope is a bit stiff, but very positive, with no slop or gear lash. I put some Bel-Ray grease on the draw-tube where I figured the glides were, and this smoothed it out quite a bit. If you are not familiar with Bel-Ray, it is what at least on high-end telescope maker uses to lubricate THEIR focusers, and it is the best lubricant that I have tried for this purpose.
The other primary difference in the telescopes is that the Orion does have an adjustable cell. Time will tell if that is really an issue and in fact, my telescope does not have “PERFECT” collimation. More later.
Now the quirks. As mentioned elsewhere, the scope comes with a clamshell type of ring assembly. It is unusual in that the part that opens uses TWO latches, even though the part that opens does so as a unit (front and rear rings are all part of the same moulding). Now this might be only me, but why not utilize a SINGLE latch. I mean these rings are tenacious in their grip, and using one latch would have meant that it would be just that much easier to move the tube in the clamshell if you wanted to rebalance… In fact, I would have made the clamshell itself a bit shorter. I say this because to get the telescope is a bit nose-heavy with 1.25 inch eyepieces, and a bit tail heavy with big 2 inch Nagler T4s, so being able to rebalance by snapping one clamp, well, would be easier to rebalance than two… And a narrower clamshell would have allowed a greater range of movement fore and aft.
“But ED, ED, ED” you’re saying…. “Why not just slip the dovetail in the saddle!” To which I would say “Well, little buckaroo, the built-in dovetail is only about 3 inches long… We got skeeters here in Texas longer that that.” So, if you need to slide, you do two latches… See? That is what I was trying to say… Otherwise, you would need to buy a set of rings and a dovetail, so you would have to spend quite a bit more (in terms of percentage of the purchase price).
This is another quirk: The lens cap doesn’t really hold on all that tight. There are little tabs that extend into the dew shield, and the tabs have little ridges that simply press out against the inside of the dew shield, making it easy to knock off. And it has this quirky little flare. In pictures, I thought that people didn’t have their covers on tight, but I was wrong… In pictures, it just looks this way.
Now, I have mine on a Gibraltar mount (review coming soon). In terms of size and stability, this is a PERFECT mount for this scope. I was able to utilize the clamshell to mount the scope using a single ¼-20 screw. Sadly, if I use the back hole, the back front clamshell latch hits the side of the cradle, and if I use the front hole to mount the back clamshell hits, making it impossible to unlatch the clamshell without removing it from the cradle. But this is not that big a deal. I have found a balance point that is “Kinda” neutral, and for the most part, I have just decided that it is easier to tighten a clutch knob when I change eyepieces than it would be to re-balance, but the bad part of this is that most of the time I have to use a medium amount of pressure the keep the tube from moving in elevation. This is ok at low and medium powers, but a bit less satisfactory at high powers. But you know what??? I have had this problem with just about all Alt-az mounts I have used (Except the gear-driven ones), and frankly, as nice as the Gibraltar is (the only Alt-az mount that I have tried that I somewhat like), I am re-affirming that I am basically a GEM lover.
Last quirk… The dew shade is removable, but you have to unscrew it. If this were a jar of peanut butter, you would never make a PBJ again. It takes a lot of turns to get the thing off, then back on.
Ok, now, finally, I will tell if it is any good, to which the simple answer is “Yes.” In fact optically it is without doubt the best small telescope (100mm and smaller) that I have ever used. The correction is almost perfect, and the lenses show a pretty smooth surface finish when star testing. Mine has a TINY bit of mis-collimation, but most people would never see it. It shows in a Cheshire in an academic way, but in real life, it is only visible on very bright stars when seeing causes the diffraction rings to flare a bit more brightly on one side than on the other. Like I said, I KNOW it is there, but in practice, the collimation error is WELL within the 3 arc-minute limit required for high-contrast viewing.
The 600mm focal length is probably a compromise (f/7.5) on the designers part probably both to reduce chromatic aberration and to make it quicker and cheaper to manufacture, but the added side-benefit is that it does offer a VERY nice magnification range. I can use my 35mm Panoptic for 4 degree 17x field (BEAUTIFUL), and my 5mm Radian for a nice, useable 120x. The telescope will easily handle high magnifications, so being able to get reasonable powers using a 10mm Plossl and a Barlow is a good thing. Much below 10mm, and I find that Plossls get too tight eye-relief for comfortable viewing, so I like the 600mm focal length well enough, though it is kind of close to the 800mm of my Vixen 140 refractor. I considered another Genisis SDF or regular Genisis (550mm or 500mm) but the cost was hard to justify, even used.
Viewing through the scope is a VERY nice experience. I like the wide fields of course, but the scope does indeed like being used at power. On the second outing, I was truly surprised at the amount of detail available on Jupiter. I could easily see the Great Red Spot, and faint traces of festoons between the northern and southern equatorial banding. The moons LOOKED resoved as spheres, but I can't be sure of this... As a matter of fact, I rushed in to pull out my Vixen 140 for a direct comparison, and frankly the 80mm was a LOT closer in performance than I would have EVER thought possible. Yes, the 140mm is MUCH bigger, but the optics are not corrected quite as well, and it is a Neo-achromat, which is to say that it is comparable to maybe 5.5 inch f/12 achromat in terms of secondary spectrum, but it IS an achromat. Yes, I could see more in the 140, but I must admit that I was surprised at how great Jupiter looked in the 80ED in comparison. My My Vixen 140 is probably on par with a good 4" APO in terms of planetary contrast, so I am quite pleased to see how excellent the 80ED did.
In-focus stars form text-book 1/8 wave or better Airy disks. The Airy disk of a moderately bright star is surrounded by an extremely faint first diffraction ring. At lower powers, they are invisible. At higher powers on moderately bright stars, they are JUST perceptible. Excellent performance. In practical terms, as good as the BEST refractors I have looked through.
Ok, this scope IS what it IS, and what it is, is a very high quality small APO.
Now, sadly, 80mm doesn’t appear to be my bag. The problem for me is that I have been spoiled by my larger scopes. As beautiful as this little doggie is in terms of performance, it is aperture deprived. 80mm doesn’t heard cattle where I live. Sorry. As much as I am trying to adore this telescope (because it is truly a GREAT small telescope), I am having trouble finding the love… In my hazy summer sky conditions typical of Central Austin, I struggled to see even M57. M13 was just a hazy spot. Wide fields just aren’t populated enough. I just don’t FELL the power… Know what I mean Vern???
I will probably sell this telescope. As much as it impresses me for what it IS, it leaves me thirsty for a bit more aperture, even at the sacrifice of the incredibly 4 degree field of view.
So, if 80mm is enough for you, the Celestron 80ED offers maybe the best value currently in the marketplace of ALL telescopes you can buy commercially. It is a LOT of telescope for the money. If you are of the mind that an 80mm refractor needs to be in your inventory, I can highly recommend this one, and I think that for visual usage, you can spend several times the amount in dollars on other 80mm scopes and not improve on the view. It is that excellent.
p.s.
Many people might think that I nitpick things like the clamshell latches. Well, to that I would respond that I am a VERY practical person. When I see something that I think was a miss on the manufacturer’s part, I put it in my review. Sometimes I think that the telescope designers are not always practicing observers, because if they WERE, they would have likely recognized that this or that small change could make the telescope more user-friendly. While most reviewers give the most attention to optics (which I think is indeed important), I personally think that reviews SHOULD include comments on practical issues like this. Anything a manufacturer’s designer can do to make my telescope easier to use is a “Good thing.” Please don’t take these comments as “Ed is always complaining about all these little details.” Instead, I would ask you to ask yourself this question: “If the manufacturer DID this, would it benefit ME in MY observing.” I write reviews for you, but also for the people that MANUFACTURE telescopes, so that they will learn how to bring products to the market that are as user-friendly as possible. They may not even read my reviews, but it is cheap market research for them to do so…LOL…
My regards, and my thanks for your many notes and emails.
Enjoy the night sky!
Semper Fidelis to my brothers and sisters reading in Afganistan and Iran. I wish I could bring you all back to the world right now. Being a godless heathen, I don't pray, but being a concerned citizen, I DO write letters to congress, and what I tell them is that you belong home.
In the meantime, stay covered...
As mentioned elsewhere, this scope in all probability shares the optical design with the Orion 80mm ED scope. Consequently, the optical performance SHOULD be identical, and while I have never had a chance to compare, others have, and indicate that they perform similarly.
I chose the Celestron version for two reasons. First, is price. It is not THAT much cheaper, but it does come with things that have to be purchased separately with the Orion version. Most notably, I comes with a clamshell type ring which has a cast-in dovetail (with ¼-20 hole making it suitable for camera tripod mounting). Next, add a finder, stalk, 25mm eyepiece, and spotter diagonal (erect image), and the value proposition does kind of tilt in favor or the Celestron (at least for me). I also prefer the balanced look, with the OTA tube being more proportionate to the size of the objective. Looks count to some (after all, I always picked beautiful women for all my wives - LOL) and yes they do count for me. The silver focus knobs, the flared lens shade, and the unusual, sculped focuser housing all work together to make this scope look rather unique, and I personally think that it is quite attractive. Fit and finish overall is very well done. Any by the way, the supplied Plossl was a 25mm, and rattled when you shook it. But tightening it up solved the problem, and it is a nice eyepiece, with a good magnification for this scope (24x).
Out of the box, my 80ED did showed the same blemish of the paint under the tube rings as mentioned by other reviews. The good news here is that I was able to polish them out (Ok, at least part of one of them just to test it) with Meguiar’s automotive paint polish. It only took a minor amount of rubbing with moderate pressure to eliminate the blemish. My suspision is that these little rascals are rolling off of the assembly line a bit to quick, and that the paint on the OTA is not fully cured when they are slapped in the box. The ring is TIGHT, so this is not caused by the ring slipping, but by the pressure of the ring clamped on the fresh paint. My guess anyway, but good news, it is an easy fix.
Now, this scope does NOT have the Crayford focuser and THAT is too bad. I prefer Crayford focusers. The focuser on this scope is a bit stiff, but very positive, with no slop or gear lash. I put some Bel-Ray grease on the draw-tube where I figured the glides were, and this smoothed it out quite a bit. If you are not familiar with Bel-Ray, it is what at least on high-end telescope maker uses to lubricate THEIR focusers, and it is the best lubricant that I have tried for this purpose.
The other primary difference in the telescopes is that the Orion does have an adjustable cell. Time will tell if that is really an issue and in fact, my telescope does not have “PERFECT” collimation. More later.
Now the quirks. As mentioned elsewhere, the scope comes with a clamshell type of ring assembly. It is unusual in that the part that opens uses TWO latches, even though the part that opens does so as a unit (front and rear rings are all part of the same moulding). Now this might be only me, but why not utilize a SINGLE latch. I mean these rings are tenacious in their grip, and using one latch would have meant that it would be just that much easier to move the tube in the clamshell if you wanted to rebalance… In fact, I would have made the clamshell itself a bit shorter. I say this because to get the telescope is a bit nose-heavy with 1.25 inch eyepieces, and a bit tail heavy with big 2 inch Nagler T4s, so being able to rebalance by snapping one clamp, well, would be easier to rebalance than two… And a narrower clamshell would have allowed a greater range of movement fore and aft.
“But ED, ED, ED” you’re saying…. “Why not just slip the dovetail in the saddle!” To which I would say “Well, little buckaroo, the built-in dovetail is only about 3 inches long… We got skeeters here in Texas longer that that.” So, if you need to slide, you do two latches… See? That is what I was trying to say… Otherwise, you would need to buy a set of rings and a dovetail, so you would have to spend quite a bit more (in terms of percentage of the purchase price).
This is another quirk: The lens cap doesn’t really hold on all that tight. There are little tabs that extend into the dew shield, and the tabs have little ridges that simply press out against the inside of the dew shield, making it easy to knock off. And it has this quirky little flare. In pictures, I thought that people didn’t have their covers on tight, but I was wrong… In pictures, it just looks this way.
Now, I have mine on a Gibraltar mount (review coming soon). In terms of size and stability, this is a PERFECT mount for this scope. I was able to utilize the clamshell to mount the scope using a single ¼-20 screw. Sadly, if I use the back hole, the back front clamshell latch hits the side of the cradle, and if I use the front hole to mount the back clamshell hits, making it impossible to unlatch the clamshell without removing it from the cradle. But this is not that big a deal. I have found a balance point that is “Kinda” neutral, and for the most part, I have just decided that it is easier to tighten a clutch knob when I change eyepieces than it would be to re-balance, but the bad part of this is that most of the time I have to use a medium amount of pressure the keep the tube from moving in elevation. This is ok at low and medium powers, but a bit less satisfactory at high powers. But you know what??? I have had this problem with just about all Alt-az mounts I have used (Except the gear-driven ones), and frankly, as nice as the Gibraltar is (the only Alt-az mount that I have tried that I somewhat like), I am re-affirming that I am basically a GEM lover.
Last quirk… The dew shade is removable, but you have to unscrew it. If this were a jar of peanut butter, you would never make a PBJ again. It takes a lot of turns to get the thing off, then back on.
Ok, now, finally, I will tell if it is any good, to which the simple answer is “Yes.” In fact optically it is without doubt the best small telescope (100mm and smaller) that I have ever used. The correction is almost perfect, and the lenses show a pretty smooth surface finish when star testing. Mine has a TINY bit of mis-collimation, but most people would never see it. It shows in a Cheshire in an academic way, but in real life, it is only visible on very bright stars when seeing causes the diffraction rings to flare a bit more brightly on one side than on the other. Like I said, I KNOW it is there, but in practice, the collimation error is WELL within the 3 arc-minute limit required for high-contrast viewing.
The 600mm focal length is probably a compromise (f/7.5) on the designers part probably both to reduce chromatic aberration and to make it quicker and cheaper to manufacture, but the added side-benefit is that it does offer a VERY nice magnification range. I can use my 35mm Panoptic for 4 degree 17x field (BEAUTIFUL), and my 5mm Radian for a nice, useable 120x. The telescope will easily handle high magnifications, so being able to get reasonable powers using a 10mm Plossl and a Barlow is a good thing. Much below 10mm, and I find that Plossls get too tight eye-relief for comfortable viewing, so I like the 600mm focal length well enough, though it is kind of close to the 800mm of my Vixen 140 refractor. I considered another Genisis SDF or regular Genisis (550mm or 500mm) but the cost was hard to justify, even used.
Viewing through the scope is a VERY nice experience. I like the wide fields of course, but the scope does indeed like being used at power. On the second outing, I was truly surprised at the amount of detail available on Jupiter. I could easily see the Great Red Spot, and faint traces of festoons between the northern and southern equatorial banding. The moons LOOKED resoved as spheres, but I can't be sure of this... As a matter of fact, I rushed in to pull out my Vixen 140 for a direct comparison, and frankly the 80mm was a LOT closer in performance than I would have EVER thought possible. Yes, the 140mm is MUCH bigger, but the optics are not corrected quite as well, and it is a Neo-achromat, which is to say that it is comparable to maybe 5.5 inch f/12 achromat in terms of secondary spectrum, but it IS an achromat. Yes, I could see more in the 140, but I must admit that I was surprised at how great Jupiter looked in the 80ED in comparison. My My Vixen 140 is probably on par with a good 4" APO in terms of planetary contrast, so I am quite pleased to see how excellent the 80ED did.
In-focus stars form text-book 1/8 wave or better Airy disks. The Airy disk of a moderately bright star is surrounded by an extremely faint first diffraction ring. At lower powers, they are invisible. At higher powers on moderately bright stars, they are JUST perceptible. Excellent performance. In practical terms, as good as the BEST refractors I have looked through.
Ok, this scope IS what it IS, and what it is, is a very high quality small APO.
Now, sadly, 80mm doesn’t appear to be my bag. The problem for me is that I have been spoiled by my larger scopes. As beautiful as this little doggie is in terms of performance, it is aperture deprived. 80mm doesn’t heard cattle where I live. Sorry. As much as I am trying to adore this telescope (because it is truly a GREAT small telescope), I am having trouble finding the love… In my hazy summer sky conditions typical of Central Austin, I struggled to see even M57. M13 was just a hazy spot. Wide fields just aren’t populated enough. I just don’t FELL the power… Know what I mean Vern???
I will probably sell this telescope. As much as it impresses me for what it IS, it leaves me thirsty for a bit more aperture, even at the sacrifice of the incredibly 4 degree field of view.
So, if 80mm is enough for you, the Celestron 80ED offers maybe the best value currently in the marketplace of ALL telescopes you can buy commercially. It is a LOT of telescope for the money. If you are of the mind that an 80mm refractor needs to be in your inventory, I can highly recommend this one, and I think that for visual usage, you can spend several times the amount in dollars on other 80mm scopes and not improve on the view. It is that excellent.
p.s.
Many people might think that I nitpick things like the clamshell latches. Well, to that I would respond that I am a VERY practical person. When I see something that I think was a miss on the manufacturer’s part, I put it in my review. Sometimes I think that the telescope designers are not always practicing observers, because if they WERE, they would have likely recognized that this or that small change could make the telescope more user-friendly. While most reviewers give the most attention to optics (which I think is indeed important), I personally think that reviews SHOULD include comments on practical issues like this. Anything a manufacturer’s designer can do to make my telescope easier to use is a “Good thing.” Please don’t take these comments as “Ed is always complaining about all these little details.” Instead, I would ask you to ask yourself this question: “If the manufacturer DID this, would it benefit ME in MY observing.” I write reviews for you, but also for the people that MANUFACTURE telescopes, so that they will learn how to bring products to the market that are as user-friendly as possible. They may not even read my reviews, but it is cheap market research for them to do so…LOL…
My regards, and my thanks for your many notes and emails.
Enjoy the night sky!
Semper Fidelis to my brothers and sisters reading in Afganistan and Iran. I wish I could bring you all back to the world right now. Being a godless heathen, I don't pray, but being a concerned citizen, I DO write letters to congress, and what I tell them is that you belong home.
In the meantime, stay covered...
Funding Member
