Telescope Reviews: C90 questions

I don't know about the new ones, but here is about the specific one I have.

Mine has starbright coatings and the rubber outside coating. I've had it for about 10 years, and use it with a Lumicon diagonal LAR setup with Celestron Ultimas. As Uncle Rod says in his guide, optically on a par with ETX's but more robustly built (mine weighs almost as much as my C5).

I use it for my travel scope and nature. At dark sites its a fun scope in the city mostly clusters, globulars, moon and planets.

You must have it cooled, just like any Mak, my C90 performs better after "a while" under the stars. I'm use to the Helical focuser on mine, some folks really don't like it.

Performance range is between 30X and about 230-250 (useful for moon, planets, doubles.) Mine lives on a Bogen 3001 set of legs with a fluid head and a Orion slow/mo adapter.

It was my only scope for about 5 years, but it went a lot of places (The Big Island and many dark places in Oregon) and I grew "fond" of the little scope. Optically mine is on a par with my C5 or C8 - obviously with the aperature differences considered.

It really is a great tool for me because I like to Bird as well as use it at night for astronomy. I don't regret getting it as my first scope because I used it so often.

The modifications that I made that really made this scope work for me were:

1. added a 6 x 30 finder vs the 5 x 20
2. added red dot finder
3. added LAR setup and a 1.25" high quality diagonal
4. Using the Ultima's instead of standard plossl's especially above 10mm
5. lubricated the scope with lithum for a smoother focus motion.

Mine is built like a tank - I don't ever think about it when I'm using it....hikes well:)

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Jeff Lee
C90,C5,C8, 10 x 50's