New Telescope advice

[tamer]

Hi people.

I'm planning on buying my first telescope, but have a low budget. There are cheap 6" newtonion telescopes going on ebay, but they don't seem to have a make. They seem to go for around £80 + £20 postage, where as a Meade or other popular makes seem to go for around 3 times (or more) the price.

The seller has a very high feedback score, so seems to be a reputable seller.

My question is would there be a drop in the performance of the telescope, just because it is cheaper, and doesn't have a popular make. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they probably come out of the same factory in Taiwan or China, or somehing...

Any advice and support is well appreciated. Thank you

[Dave Mitsky]

It probably wise to avoid such telescopes, particularly if they are similar to this one.

http://cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=1105

Dave Mitsky

[kookbreaker]

I agree with Dave. They are terrible telescopes. The feedback comes from the fact that the seller does send you the product quickly and efficiently. It doesn't mean it is any good. There's also the fact that most people don't know any better.

These scopes have probably no level of inspection that one would expect from major companies. This inspection is critical, especially for reflectors at that size.

I will also say it is certainly not from the factory that Orion & Celestron use, nor does it seem to be from the one Meade uses.

[Siguy]

The 6'' newtonians are made by Hioptic (http://www.hioptic.com/), a company that has never made a decent telescope. I know, I had one of those 6'' newtonians. They're crap. The worst part is the mount, but the whole telescope is really all junk. The telescope is a bird-jones catadioptric, or in other words, a cheap way to "correct" spherical aberration which doesn't work so well. The mount is poorly made, wobbly, impossible to use, and pieces fall off. The eyepieces are extremely poor quality and have laughable eye relief. The finderscope is not achromatic, and is uncoated, stopped down to about 5mm, and impossible to use. The telescope came with some of the wrong parts when I got it.

Hioptic makes many of the Bushnell and Tasco and generic department store telescopes.

Never buy any telescope from a department store or ebay.