The goal is to have old school smaller telescopes which are lighter weight, easy to carry, fast to set up, adjustable, occupy a small footprint, and easy to use!
STARBLAST II EQ
First up is this Orion StarBlast II 4.5" EQ f/4 parabolic Reflector & AstroTrack Motor Drive is capable of astro imaging and has a total weight of only 20.7 pounds. The OTA is 4lbs. and the mount with tripod is only 11.9lbs. The German Equatorial counterweight adds a mere 4.8lbs. One welcomed old school feature is the clock drive. It can set a simple sidereal tracking drive rate with only one button. Power is from a simple 9-volt battery. Setting circles and a finder will facilitate star hopping to find deep sky objects without a computer. A computer however can dedicate
STARBLAST
The second telescope ordered is the tabletop "grab and go" Dobsonian version StarBlast. Remarkably, the total weight of this telescope is only 13lbs (7.7lbs lighter than the EQ). It can carry with one hand, and will be ideal for Lucky Imaging of sky objects where they are left to drift across the FOV without a drive, a camera takes thousands of short exposure images, and a video is captured and processed. This works for both telescopes.
TELESCOPES COMPARED
The OTAs appear to have a blue and green color variation and they come with different oculars - the EQ has better Sirius Plossls, a 25.0mm and 10.0mm giving a magnification of 18x and 45x respectively. The tabletop comes with lesser quality Explorer II Kellner 17.0mm and a 6.0mm giving magnifications of 26x and 75x respectively. Another curious difference quoted in the specs concerns the primary mirrors. EQ has soda-lime plate glass and the tabletop has low thermal expansion borosilicate glass. Both versions offer the EZ Finder II finderscope. This is 1:1 and has no light gathering ability - it can be replaced with a standard lens finder or a cell phone with a sky app for starhopping.
ADVANTAGES ARE MANY
These telescopes are physically small taking up very little space - a footprint ideal for operating from a room and window in the home or a small observatory. The tabletop is extremely easy to use with only a simple altitude knob. The tabletop and the EQ can adjust weight by rotating and changing the OTA tube position to compensate for the addition of accessories.
MODIFICATIONS
For serious starhopping, the EZ Finder II finderscope will need to be replaced or supplemented. At 1:1 and no light gathering ability - it does not offer ability to show dimmer stars over that of the human eye. In a severe light polluted environment, it's likely the EZ Finder II finderscope will show no stars or only one or two of the brightest. It may have strength in quickly centering the Moon and bright planets. The addition of a cel phone finder with a sky app will create a push to goto telescope. These generally lose accuracy when moving across a large section of the sky, from East to West or North to South for example. However, observing from a room or deck, only one quadrant of the sky is viewed at a time and the cell phone finder will perform well.
EQ-1 MOUNT
This mount is compatible with other small telescopes, like the Orion 80mm refractor and rings. Having a clock drive gives it many advantages.
EMULATION & APPLICATIONS
Emulating a $3,000.00 4.5" aperture Unistellar eVscope with a $200 Orion StarBlast is one project, for imaging deep sky objects. Instead of trying to find objects using an unreliable eVscope's internal computer, the StarBlast telescopes will use manual starhopping to locate objects and a new technique called Lucky Imaging, with and without a drive. A computer will handle the camera software and processing.
