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Celestron C11 S (XLT)
Brand | Celestron |
Part Number | |
Availability | available |
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Product Info
Overview
Reviews
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Oct 31, 2008
Excellent Optics Hampered by an Overloaded Mount
Pros:Exceptional OTA, smooth action, great optics.
Cons:Celestron mount poor, Bad customer service.
Comments:Last spring I traded in my C9.25 on an Orion Skyview pro GOTO mount for the C11 SGT on the Celestron CG-5 mount. The curse of a new telescope held true, even in normally cloudless Arizona, and it was some time before I could fully explore this setup.
Bottom Line: Would you recommend this item? Yes
While the C11 OTA is spectacular, I was disappointed in the mount, and had to replace it. The mount does not seem robust enough to carry this heavy tube, and shaking was a substantial problem. In addition, the handheld controller arrived from the factory with a faulty cord. The fine folks at Starizona fixed it for me, but I continued to have problems with lost communication between the controller and the mount. This results in the mount not stopping at the appropriate position, but continuing to grind on (this is an extremely noisy mount!) until it jammed far out of position. This always required switching off the power and going through another alignment process. I never found this to be easy, and always had to reset location and time from the beginning, then had to do massive adjustments to locate alignment stars. Once aligned, the mount was fairly good at GOTO but unreliable.
I suspect that Celestron will stop selling the C11 with the CG-5 now that the CGEM is coming out. However, it makes sense to purchase this combination, as the C11 OTA alone is about a grand more than this combination.
Enough about mounts. The pricing combination makes this a worthwhile choice, even if your buy it then re-sell the CG-5 right away.
The C11 OTA was perfectly collimated on arrival, and I cannot detect any aberrations anywhere in the field of view. Focusing is the best I have experienced, and I have not noticed any image shift at any magnification. I used to use a Meade Electronic Focuser, but found manual focusing to be just as good on this 'scope.
My only complaint with the OTA is that there are supposed to be two buttons that hold the front cover in place. One of these buttons was missing. I am sure it is only a $0.25 piece, but Celestron support was difficult, slow and unpleasant to work with. After three months of slow email interchange, I finally gave up.
I rated the OTA as a 5, the mount as a 1.Sort by