StarMaster 10" f/6 Dobsonian

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StarMaster 10" f/6 Dobsonian
Superb performer! Deep-sky images are great, and planetary images
must be seen to be believed. Great attention to detail in construction.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38384

StarMaster 10" f/6 Dobsonian
I love my 10" and use it all the time. Gives me great views.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38385

StarMaster 10" f/6 Dobsonian
I've got the new 10" EL with the fixed upper cage assembly. The optics are simply unbelievable (thanks Carl Zambuto). I don't think a 10" APO would outperform this scope by a whole lot. I would give the scope a 10 except for some mechanical issues:

The mirror cell is not up to the quality I'd expect at this price. The cell looks home made (probably is made by Rick) and exhibits about 1/5" of vertical shifting when moving through the altitude axis. I also don't care for the AstroSystems secondary/diagonal. Hard to adjust and didn't come from the "factory" centered in front of the focuser (the spider mounting holes actually weren't drilled correctly). Upon centering the spider vanes were noticably curvy.

Not as portable as a traditional truss tube scope - the rocker box is actually quite tall and the the upper cage assembly is fairly ungainly too. The upside is setup time (~3 minutes) and I'll bet that I set up more often than I would if it were a regular truss Dob. Extremely smooth in both axes. Now offered with a Rigel Quickfinder, light shroud and secondary dust cover standard.

Mechanically an 8, Optically a 10+.

Overall Rating: 9
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38386

StarMaster 10" f/6 Dobsonian
Everything I expected and more. Used with top quality eyepieces, this scope delivers excellent deep space and planetary views. Set-up in less than 5 minutes, easy collimation and smooth movement

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38388

StarMaster 10" f/6 Dobsonian
The Starmaster 11"EL has excellent optics equal to any refractor. Easy to use and transport.

Overall Rating: 10
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38389

StarMaster 10" f/6 Dobsonian
Large and heavy for a 10" scope, the mount is quite stable. Far superior to a friend's 12.5" Meade. Well designed bearings required no tweaking on my part. Easy to hand guide at 340X with very little "stiction". Two piece design is unusual and somewhat bulky but, is very fast to setup in the field. Superb optics (Zambuto primary). Once collimated, very contrasty and evenly spaced fringes are seen in a star test (it's pretty breezy here in Idaho, so rarely is a really good star test feasible). Secondary mirror only barely large enough which is probably a good thing. Views with Televue eyepieces (35mm Panoptic, 19mm Panoptic, 9mm Nagler) are quite sharp all the way to the edge, no doubt helped by the relatively high f number (f/6). Aside from weight which I willing to live with for the added stability, the one gripe is that the collimation screws are somewhat loose, so when driving to remote desert site, the scope gets wildly out of collimation. Would be nice if there were tighter tolerance threads and if they were perhaps spring loaded or had a means of locking the collimation down. Overall, I'm quite pleased with it. When finances permit, Starmaster is definitely in the running when I look for a bigger scope.

Overall Rating: 9
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38390

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