64 replies to this topic

[Terra Nova]

What are the colors of your telescopes? I only have seven conventional telescopes now (not counting the SeeStar 50) and they’re all refractors.

1 Gold

1 Red

2 Black

3 White

 

So I guess for me, white wins and both of my classics are white. I guess that means I’m a traditionalist.

[starman876]

depends on the vintage. some really old scopes were red and green.   ziess might have been the leader in white.   Most scopes these days are white.   

[ram812]

AstroTech white, Orion metal flake blue and Celstron metal flake blue. Maybe throw in a "Generic White"😃 for good measures😁. Oh, Orion flat black, and I will stop there....

Ralph
So. Oregon

[hyiger]

I've been a William Optics fan recently so most of my scopes are red. 

[Kitfox]

Lots of shades of white

 

A few Epsilon Yellow with those pretty green knobs

 

Meade LX200 Blue

 

TV 85 green

 

Questar purple

 

 

Not quite a rainbow, and the various shades of white dominate. I knew there were a lot of “whites”, but just about every scope is different…

Edited by Kitfox, 08 February 2025 - 03:27 PM.

[stevew]

I prefer white telescopes, but have had a few black ones over the years.

[mana]

My 60 mm f/15 Tasco refractor is white and has a black dew shield. It was bought in 1975.

My SP-C8, from 1987, is black.

 

Miguel

[Josephus Miller]

Pebble orange!

[Garyth64]

Refractors:

2 Gold

3 Ivory

7 White

2 Grey

2 Black

 

Reflectors:

3 Grey

1 Red

1 White

1 Brown

Edited by Garyth64, 08 February 2025 - 03:32 PM.

[gstrumol]

 

• My AT80EDL and TAL 100RS are both white.
• The Orion Apex 90 Mak is a metallic burgundy red.
• My C8 is a dark gray.
• My PST is black and gold.
• And finally my Astroscan is a bright red!

[Andrea Salati]

For a brief time in the early to mid eighties in Italy we received some Japanese stuff that came in yellow and orange for sure. Possibly other colors as well. I never had one, I stuck to the classic white, which still is my color of choice frankly.
Also, in the early nineties, you had the famous 90mm baby blue Vernonscope refractors with lenses made by Roland Christen.

Plus the ones mentioned already by other contributors.

[deSitter]

What are the colors of your telescopes? I only have seven conventional telescopes now (not counting the SeeStar 50) and they’re all refractors.

1 Gold

1 Red

2 Black

3 White

 

So I guess for me, white wins and both of my classics are white. I guess that means I’m a traditionalist.

When I was a kid with my first telescope, I was envious of Unitrons because they were white. To me, all real telescopes are white My scope had a perfect star test and passed the diffraction limit test and made great images of the Moon and planets, and the distant subdivision across the creek valley. It was a great scope, but it wasn't white.

 

That scope was a Sears 6344, which is the most perfect color maybe ever for a precision instrument - hain't blue, coined by our own Terra Nova I believe!

 

I now have a "hain't grey neither" brother Sears 6335 v.2. I have a hammertone silver and midnight blue Bushnell SkyChief. I have 3 purple-blue ETXes, anodized yet, so they shine a special shine, and a silver Celestron Mak. I have a black Celestron/Vixen refractor. I also have a white 90mm AO telescope that would go toe-to-toe with any of those Unitrons, so my world got bigger and more colorful since then.

 

-drl

Edited by deSitter, 08 February 2025 - 04:19 PM.

[NiteGuy]

Mine are all White, Black, Grey...BORING!!

 

I'm redoing a 6-inch F4 Dob as sort of a counter-balanced, alt-az, modified Dob-Springfield, where the eyepiece remains horizontal at the same height all the time. For something not-so-boring, I think I'll make it a NICE LIGHT PASTEL GREEN with polished aluminum accents. How's that sound?

[scout]

Refractors:

60mm Asahi-Pentax - white with black & chrome

60mm Meade ETX-60 - dark blue with black

72mm AT72EDII - white, black with red accents

102mm AT102EDL - white, black & Aston Martin grey focuser.

 

Reflectors:

My first telescope was a bright red Tasco 114mm 11TR reflector that I miss for nostalgic reasons, and I later had a black Orion 10" XT10 dob that I gave to a friend when I moved.

Edited by scout, 08 February 2025 - 04:52 PM.

[clamchip]

My telescopes are primarily white.

Which makes me remember Jr. High the early 70's our class telescopes were a sea of white and one orange thing!

I absolutely love this blue/green on my old Scope 2515 76mm, I'll miss it forever. It's probably in a museum

of modern art  by now I imagine. My Spacek 4 inch is a pretty color. And I miss my Tinsley 4 inch and it's

beautiful gray/blue.

Robert

 

Edited by clamchip, 08 February 2025 - 05:25 PM.

[scout]

^ I love the look of baby blue and similar light/turquoise blue telescopes. I've always wanted 94mm Brandon or an older classic Sears 6333/6339 etc. refractor.

[Jay_Reynolds_Freeman]

Local telescope fans try to keep me away from the racks of aerosol-spray paints at hardware stores, but they never succeed. My telescopes' colors have included:

 

o White.

o White with black trim.

o White with Vixen/Takahashi-green trim.

o White with bronze trim (paint, not metal).

o White with a purple finder. I had a friend who ran a cosmetics business, from her I got reasonable quantities of various odd-color nail-polish enamels to use as paint.

o White / gray with splotches of orange and black applied camouflage-pattern style. This was to make it difficult to fence if anybody stole it, or perhaps too ugly to steal in the first place.

o Black.

o Black with vast numbers of green glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on to cover up nicks in the paint.

o Metallic silver -- a Newtonian tube covered with shiny film.

o Brass. A "decorative" 80 mm f/11 that came in a brass tube. It had quite good optics, so I set up as an ersatz amateur-sized telescope built in the 1800s.

o Red and gray -- the tube and other parts of a 12.5-inch Dobson-mounted Newtonian

o Fluorescent red -- I refinished a NexStar 8 at the time "Classic Coke" was a big thing in commercials. Didn't bother to make stencils for the label.

o Fluorescent red/orange with black trim -- that was Refractor Red, of course.

o Pearlescent pink with gold trim (again, just paint).

o Celestron orange.

o A blue/green color about half way between lime and teal.

o Brandon blue.

o Meade dark blue.

o Questar blue, and let's not talk about the dew shield.

o And fifty shades of gray ... well, maybe not quite that many.

 

But I have never had a yellow telescope. My telescopes are all very brave.

 

 

Clear and multi-colored sky to you all ...

[Martin]

Well most of the Meade's are white

Vixen of course are white

Meade ETX's, one purple, the other 2 have the star fields or nebulae's printed on them.

Celestron refractors are black. 

Newts are all white. 

 

Martin

[Bomber Bob]

The original tube color of my 1983 Mizar GT-80S is that Café con leche -- very pretty!  Otherwise, the majority are white & black.  OTOH, these make my racing green Dakin 4 and (Victorian) ruby red Tinsley 6 really stand out.

[ccwemyss]

One red, one silver hammer tone and blue, one purple, one carbon fiber, everything else white and black/gray.

 

Chip W.

[BillinBallard]

The vast majority of scopes I have built, bought, and still own have been white.  Here are two refractors; a 5”F10 with a D&G lens and a 6” F5 with a Jaegers lens. I put them together  during a rebellious phase about 10 or 15 years ago.  They were both very nice scopes, and I believe are still with other CN members. 
 

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Edited by BillinBallard, 08 February 2025 - 08:43 PM.

[John Higbee]

White - Cave 12.5" f/6 Reflector;  Meade RG 12.5" f/6 Reflector; Spacek 6" f/16 Refractor; Criterion RV-6 6" Reflector; Edmund 6" f/8 Reflector (Super Space Conqueror); Tasco 60mm 5VTE Refractor; Unitron 4" f/15 Model 150 Refractor

 

Orange - Five Celestron SCTs (14"/11"/8"/5"/90mm)

 

Green - Tinsley Saturn 6" Refractor

 

Black - Zhumell 25X100mm Binoculars

[Sketcher]

1 some kind of Pale Green

2 Black

1 Yellow (not a cowardly yellow  )

1 Red

1 Deep Blue

1 some kind of Silver-Chrome

1 the color of Cedar - the wood

2 White

[Exnihilo]

White, black, blue, CF grey, that's it for me.

[Kefka1138]

Black and White here!