Oh yeah , I forgot all about those GSO focusers . They made a decent 2 speed Crawford style unit for the money and made models for multiple applications . I was gonna upgrade to one on. my 8” Schmidt Newtonian years ago since the stock Meade focuser was such a poor piece . I ended up using some teflon strips self sticking to take the massive amount of play out of the Meade focuser . It’s a lot better now and didn’t really have the money to spend back then .
@Starrancher yeah their focusers are pretty good, better then the Synta focusers in my opinion.
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I have no clue who Orion had those manufactured by . It could have been any of those companies you listed . The stuff coming out of Taiwan was pretty impressive for the most part . I’ve always been very happy with my Meade Plossls . Could never see a difference in the expensive Tele Vue Plossls I tried at star parties . The Vixen stuff was really nice to but I compared side by side to my Meade’s at a star party and couldn’t really see improvement in image quality . I think the Vixens had 5 elements and were 55 degree apparent FOV instead of the typical 52 degree of a Plossl .
Right . If I recollect correctly, they also made a helical focuser too . I haven’t bought anything new since around 2010 . So is GSO still making all that stuff ?
I bought a GSO 8x50 finder last year, so I guess they are still making stuff. Agena Astro is still offering them for sale.
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Agena Astro . I heard they bought out the stock from OPT when they went out .
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Yup, I heard that too.
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It’s sad . OPT had such a nice store there in Oceanside . I’d been there quite a few times when I was still living in California . They used to have star parties in the parking lot years ago where they’d take a bunch of display scopes out of the store so you could look through all different sizes and types of scopes . That was the coolest thing . It gave people a first hand experience of what you would get for the money .
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I think they did those on Saturday nights a few times a year .
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@Starrancher yeah i heard the same thing.
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That’s a shame. I never went there but I heard about their great customer service. Too many astronomy retailers have gone under. Recently OPT and Orion/Meade. All three of my telescopes were made by companies that are now out of business: Cave, Parks and D&G. It’s really a shame. I was also a regular at Lumicon when they were in Livermore, and now they’ve been gone for a long time too. That reminds me of a story. About 15 years ago I was up at Lick talking to one of the astronomers. He was showing me his equipment and I asked if the fabricated it up there, because they are equipped for that. He said no, he got all his electronics OTS from Orion. I was shocked. I also wondered why Orion never advertised that.
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I can honestly say i have never in a store dedicated to selling telescopes. They don’t exist in Ohio lol
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They seem to not exist in California anymore either, although there used to be quite a few. When I bought my Cave I went down there and ordered it directly from Tom Cave. Now in NorCal it’s about a five minute drive from where the Orion store was, and Lumicon was about 40 minute drive.
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Scope City is gone . They had a couple locations maybe more . Obviously the Orion store is gone , OPT is gone but there is Orange County Telescope in Santa Ana . I get weekly emails from them . It looks like a fairly small store but at least there someone interested in keeping it going . They host star parties at a park in Irvine once a month too . Not a really dark sky site but it seems people don’t want to drive out very far anymore . When I left California it was about a 2 hour drive for me to get out to Joshua Tree National Park and the skies were pretty good out there back in 2010 . Of course suburbia keeps spreading so I don’t know what it’s like these days .
Right . It was a niche market at best even back in its heyday . I doubt the numbers of enthusiasts have grown and with internet retailers it’s even become harder to make a go of selling telescopes and related equipment . OPT was 2 hours or more for me when I was in California . Scope City had a couple locations and the closest on was over an hour away . Now I’m out in the boonies so everything is far . Even the grocery store is an hour from me . I don’t even know but there still might be a Telescope Shoppe in southern Arizona but that’d be a 4 hour drive each way . I’m glad I don’t need to buy anything else . It’s gotten a bit tough unless you know exactly what you want and buy on line and I did buy all my filters , a few eyepieces , some Astrozap stuff as well as my 12 volt cigarette lighter cords to power my mounts on line but the scopes themselves I bought at a brick and mortar store .
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My 16 inch and 10 inch are used and i drove to get those. Everything else was ordered online.
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