Celestron G-5

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Celestron G-5
About the colliding slow motion controls...
All of you can mount the scope the other way round, so that the DEC control knob points forward.
This helps alot.

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Celestron G-5
A quick first impression: I just got this thing and set it up on a Bogen mini geared head, so no impressions about Celestron's tripod yet. My first impressions are that the optics of this OTA are quite good: great detail on the moon; The Trapezium shows up very nicely; no planets yet (none in the sky at the rime I was looking); Airy disk appears to be exactly what you'd expect from an SCT. Focusing is extremely smooth; allows much finer adjustment than the R&P focuser on my small refractor. I'm sure that I'll get it on the GEM sooner or later, but this OTA plus the collapsible camera tripod and geared head is unbeatable for the combination of portability and performance.

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Celestron G-5
Ease of use is a 10. When I have collimation properly adjusted, views can be superb. Have seen down to 13.1 mag as defined by photo of Ring Neb on this site. Brightness, as compared only to lesser quality 4.5" Newts is superb. If properly polar aligned, Tracking will stay on an object. I have gone in on some nights and returned 2 hours later to find object still on. First optical tube I received was a reject due to slightly small corrector plate could not be held in place by retainer ring. Two returns for repair and finally third time replaced with new tube. No problem with this tube. In fact,

Overall Rating: 9
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Celestron G-5
Great scope, deserves a better mount. Best combination of size, weight and price for us city dwellers. Easy to take to the country and enought 'scope to satisfy when you get there. Takes good eyepieces (Meade SWA, TV Plossl, Panoptic) well; everyone should upgrade from the basic eyepieces that come with the 'scope. The mount really turned me off, but I have used 'scopes on really good mounts before. The mount would be OK for a first-time user to get familiar with the 'scope and astronomy in general. Mounted it on a CG4/Skyview as soon as I could and am much happier with the setup; didn't lose hardly any of the portability. Would highly recommend.

Overall Rating: 9
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Celestron G-5
I recently purchased a Celestron G5 (without the mount) after having gone through several returns with Meade on their 90mm ETX (spotting scope). All I can say is the G5 is in a completely different league. Right away you notice that it is constructed out of metal not plastic. Testing the optics revealed beautifully concentric rings in and out of focus (something the Meade did not have in a scope that cannot be collimated by the owner -- or least your not suppose to try), with one side of focus looking slightly softer than the other, apparently a small correction error.

I then set out to split some doubles, like the double/double in Lyra; no problem. I then attempted Nu Scorpii with the "fainter" pair nicely split and the "brighter" pair looking like a snowman during moments of steady seeing (not a clean split). Given the magnitude difference of the brighter pair (6.5,4.3) and their .9' separation (the scopes theoretical Dawes limit) that ain't bad. I certainly was a far cry from my ETX (aperture differences aside).

Views of the moon revealed exquisite contrast at all powers used. I then located M104, which happened to be sitting very close to the gibbous moon, and could see a bright core with a faint halo using a 12mm Nagler T4 (ironically 104X); very impressive. Finally, at 2:00 am, I tried it on some wide open clusters like M6 and M7. Pinpoint stars across the field, beautiful.

I can't tell you how relieved I was at the scopes performance. Getting a good
scope has proven difficult, at least with Meade. With Celestron the first one was excellent. A local dealer had patiently worked with me through several returns and loaned me the G5 to try before I purchased it.

One negative of the scope was the finder. It wasn't its optic so much as its location. With short focal length eyepieces (ex:U.O orthos) it interfered with the positioning of my head somewhat. I just removed the screws and remounted it slightly lower down the side of the OTA with double sided tape. Works fine for now.

In closing I would just like to commend Celestron on a fine scope (despite rumors of quality declines due to their purchase by Tasco). If all their scopes perform this well Meade had better get its act together because almost everything I have ever purchased from them did not work properly. Perhaps they should read their own marketing hype and try living up to it. For those Meade owners happy with their equipment I mean no offense, it just seems statistically impossible to keep getting such garbage if it is not the rule rather than the exception. If you got a good one, consider yourself very lucky.

Despite the finder problem I can see no reason not to give the scope a 10. Can't wait for a moonless night or for planets to return!

Overall Rating: 10
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38929

Celestron G-5
I've previously entered a vote on this scope from a different site, so I'm entering a comment only at this time. I've owned it for some time now, and still have to say that I'm very satisfied with it. I think that the G5 is the ideal scope for anyone starting out in ameture astronomy, and it may be ideal for the observer with some history, depending on his/her needs and interests. As a five inch catadioptic, it offers the ideal balance between portability and aperture, and unlike a dob, you have the advantage of the clock drive. I've been able to compare with an ETX, and I easily prefer the G5. While I haven't had the opportunity to compare to a pronto or ranger, I suspect that it should outperform them as well, due to its aperture -- you certainly can expect to see fainter objects. I haven't seen them advertised lately, at least not in adds directly from celestron. I hope they're still offering the G5. I'm not really into the automated finding scopes. I love the challenge of finding objects, it's part of the learning and fun.

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Celestron G-5
The g-5 is a great scope and I love the portability. Just mount on my tripod and im ready. The optics were very good I was pleased with it.I also own a televue pronto with the sky tour system. Although the pronto optically is better than the g-5 it also cost a bit more. Im waiting for the weather to clear so I can mount it on my telepod with skytour . The mount that came with the g-5 is poor..

Overall Rating: 9
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38931

Celestron G-5
When buying my first telescope I was looking for a compact, portable package with nice optics at a fair price. After a couple of months I decided to buy the G5 and have been pleased with that choice for more than half a year now. The package is portable: I have no problems carrying it a couple of hundred meters with one or two hands, with an accessory case over my shoulder.

The most common complaint is about the mount and tripod. The tripod seems to be identical to the one that comes with the larger CG-5 mount. Vibrations can be suppressed by using damping pads or filling the legs with sand. The mount is better than it looks. It is light and stable enough for visual use, if it is not too windy. The slow motion knobs give a cheap impression and the screws locking them to their shafts constantly need tightening. Pointing the declination knob forward effectively avoids collisions between the knob and the R.A. motor, an easy and big improvement. After careful polar alignment the R.A. motor tracks very well. It even allows for unguided photography with just a camera on the tripod. Although it works rather well, the mount is the biggest drawback of the whole package. The total cost after upgrading to a CG-5 is larger than that of a G8. If aperture is more important than portability and wide-field capability, the G8 may be a better choice. On the other hand, comparing the prices of the G5 package and the C5 tube alone, the EQ mount is more or less a gift.

The tube is nice and solid with a very smooth focusing mechanism. No image shift at all. The central obstruction (C.O.) is rather large at 40%, but doesn't seem to degrade images considerably. When it comes to contrast the quality of the optical surfaces and baffling are more important than C.O. and it seems Celestron have made a good job there. Learning to collimate is a must for every SCT owner but it is easily done in a couple of minutes. I am not an expert star tester, but the only aberration I have been able to find in the optics is undercorrection by about 1/6 wavelength. The Epsilon lyrae double-double is cleanly split. Details along the moon's terminator are spectacular. I can see about five belts on Jupiter, two on Saturn and Cassini's division almost all the way around. I suspect it can perform better since the seeing conditions rarely are good around here. A refractor of equal focal length probably outperforms the G5 on planets, with the cost of a considerably bulkier tube. On deep sky the performance is very good. I would rate the tube as an excellent all-round instrument that can be brought anywhere on airplanes etc.

Exchanging the cheap prism diagonal with an Intes mirror diagonal yielded brighter and crisper views. The 6x30 finder scope is OK, but I exchanged it with a 8X50 finder. Don't take the small black aperture out of the finder tube: it's not there to stop down the 30 mm aperture, as some suggest. It is actually a baffle and the only effect will be a decrease in contrast.

The tube gets a 10 for packing sufficient aperture, moderate focal length, and nice optics into a portable telescope. The mount gets a 9 for a capable mount at virtually no cost. Considering the modest cost for this nice package, my total rating is closer to ten than to nine.

Overall Rating: 10
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Celestron G-5
I just got my G-5 a week ago. I live in a city so it's quite hard to see nebula's/ galaxy's/ star clusters, but, for viewing planets and stars its the best.

Overall Rating: 8
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Link to this vote: http://excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=38933

Celestron G-5
I've been on the whole favorably impressed with G5. Portability is great! I've used it more the first month than all my years of using a 12.5" monster dob. I took it camping to Florida,and could pack the whole thing in a large plastic luggage case. I added a reducer/corrector and now boast a 2.1 degree FOV with a 35mm Plossl! I also added a 2" star diagonal with a 1/10 wave flat. This improved star images greatly, and also stability when using those heavy Naglers and Speer-Whalers. The focus in-travel is great, you won't have any trouble accomodating those eyepieces! Optics are good, but a little bit overcorrected. A Ronchi test shows slight curving at the edges.
You also need to collimate it, and it does go out of adjustment periodically, so keep doing those star tests!

I would rate it a 10 if it wasn't for the mount. It is good for visual use, and drive works smoothly, but forget serious astrophotography! I had to rebalance tube and add extra counter weight to use 2" diagonal and Speer-Whaler, but stability was compromised very little for visual use. I also had to make slight modifications on the mount to get it to work smoothly, such as loosening worm gear brachet and repositioning to keep worm gear from binding. I also added set screws to stabilize counter balance shaft, which tends to wabble. I also use it for terrestrial photography, it adapts easy to a sturdy Bogen tripod.

Overall, a great general purpose scope! I recommend it.

JP in St. Louis

Overall Rating: 9
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Celestron G-5
Good value for the price. The mounting is cheap, but functional, with a reasonable drive. A set of vibration supression pads helps greatly. I have been disappointed with the optics, however. Despite rave reviews from almost eveyone about how great C5 optics are, my ota needs to go back to Celestron for replacement! Outside focus, the star image appears crisp, but at focus there is noticeable astigmatism and some flare on bright stars. The star image inside focus is horrible, with apparent serious spherical abberation and a strange "4 spike" pattern similar to a newtonian's spider vanes appears! The corrector was decentered from the factory and I adjusted that to some benefit, but overall I estimate the optics are, maybe, 1/2 wave at best. And all this is seen with or without a star diagonal. Bad!!!! Despite the optics, the scope is exceptionally compact and is a terrific grab-n-go or travel scope.

Overall Rating: 7
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Celestron G-5
Voted for this scope earlier and gave it a 10. Just wanted to update as I have been rising in the wee hours to look at the planets.

Views are excellent. As one reviewer above indicated above, I think I see the Encke Division, but perhaps it is simply a color variation. A great deal of variation is visible in Saturns rings as is color at the polar region and around the equatorial region.

Jupiter is a lot of fun. I can actually see detail/color variation WITHIN the GRS. About 4 or 5 bands are also visible. The central obstruction does slightly reduce contrast somewhat, particularly the finer detail. However, as an all around scope it is hard to image anything more versatile. Very good planetary performance combined with enough aperture to do some serious deep-sky observing from a dark site.

Portability, in conjuction with the aperture, are outstanding. I pop out of bed and have the scope on a photo tripod with a slow motion adaptor. Pick up the scope mounted to the tripod and drop a couple eyepieces in my pocket and out the door I go. Or, if I choose, I use the CG3 mount with RA drive and study the moon from my balcony.

I hope the individual who's review precedes this one has good fortune with Celestron and rectifies the problem with his scope -- they obviously got a lemon. If they do right by you, you'll be a happy camper.

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Celestron G-5
I'm just amazed by the optics of this little scope! I replaced a very good quality, but bulky, 6" reflector with the G5, and in all but pure light grasp the G5 is better. The star test on mine was spot on right out of the box, and the thing seems to take stupidly high amounts of power. The mount is really pretty decent considering its portability and price. And I e-mailed two different questions to Celestron's tech support, and both times received very prompt and helpful replies. Probably the one scope on the market that can do most things well most often for the least amount of money. A solid 10.

Overall Rating: 10
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Celestron G-5
I have submitted a review above, but would like to add to it. After almost a year of pretty heavy use I noticed that the corrector had come loose and sent it back to Celestron for repair on a Monday. They had it back to me Friday of the same week. Not bad. I love the scope.

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Celestron G-5
This comment is to thank the correspondent who suggested that the nuts holding the worm in place can be loosened to make the worm easier to turn. I had been having a problem with the drive: the worm was so stiff that the motor (and the small gear attached to it) would pivot downwards, allowing the tooth on the
small gear to slip past (without engaging) the teeth on the large gear. I solved this problem in two steps:
1. A weight was added to the long set screw on the motor mount. The weight acts in a direction to oppose the tendency of the motor to ride downwards, rather than engaging the large gear, as it is supposed to do. The weight added helped, but was not quite enough to prevent slippage all the time.
I was about to substitute a still longer set screw, so that the same weight,
at the end of that screw, would, through increased leverage, raise the torque holding the motor in its proper position. However, I saw the comment about loosening the worm, and tried that. With a worm that turns more freely, the present weight at the end of the present set screw seems to be enough to keep the drive operating reliably.

After I have had more experience with the scope, I'll vote formally on it, but for now, my impressions are much like the others of you who enjoy using the scope for its portability.

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Celestron G-5
A follow up to my motor-fix comment above: Loosening the worm added another problem: with a loose worm, there is enough backlash that you cannot use the drive to adjust your R.A. - something you may want to do to center an object before switching to higher power. My suggested drive fix, for those of you whose drives are slipping, is to remove the piece labeled "Locking Screw" in Fig. 2 of the Installation Instructions for the Motor Drive, and replace it with
a metric cap screw othe the same thread, but about 2 1/2" to 3" long. File a
flat on the screw just under the cap, drill a small hole perpendicular to that
flat, and using the hole, hang a moderate weight just below the cap of the screw. When the weighted cap screw is threaded into the motor mount where the locking screw was located, it will torque the R.A. motor gear against the driven gear, which will fix the slipage.

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Celestron G-5
Postscript to my comments of 8-25-00 about the G-5 - The ota went back to Celestron where the corrector was pretty nuch properly centered. The other work done was "cleaning and collimating". The scope still has very noticeable sherical abberation. Jupiter and Saturn barely tolerate 100X and even that is marginal. Cassini's division is only suspected most of the time and is never clear. BUYER BEWARE: It appears that Celestron's definition of "diffraction limited" has changed recently.

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>Postscript to my comments of 8-25-00 about the G-5 -  The ota went back to Celestron where the corrector was pretty nuch properly centered.  The other work done was "cleaning and collimating".  The scope still has very noticeable sherical abberation.  Jupiter and Saturn barely tolerate 100X and even that is marginal.  Cassini's division is only suspected most of the time and is never clear.  BUYER BEWARE:  It appears that Celestron's definition of "diffraction limited" has changed recently.


You have a defective scope. Either the mirrors are figured wrong or the corrector plate is improperly matched. Send it back to Celestron, scream, rant, and rave....and they will fix it to near perfection.
I have owned over 60 scopes, and the only 3  with "bad" optics were all premium refractors. Two AP Travelers (YES Travelers) and one Meade 127ED. One Traveler needed to be refigured, and the other needed to have the lens remounted and re-oil spaced. The Meade needed to have an element replaced. Out of the 3 C5s I owned, all were gems!!! You were just unlucky, that's all.
The moral of the story is...Buyer beware, no matter from whom you buy....
Celestron G-5
After using this scope 2-3x per week for 6 months I can report that the optics are excellent! However, I did need to replace the standard prism diagonal with a TeleVue mirror diagonal.

At times of steady seeing, I have observed the Enke Minima in Saturn's A-ring at 208x with a TeleVue 6mm Radian eyepiece. The Cassini Division is routinely easy to observe around the entire visible ring system, as well as 5 of the planet's moons. Cloud bands on Jupiter are visible to the polar regions. Shadow transits of the moons are sharp, well-defined black dots. Globular clusters such as M13 and M92 are resolvable to swarms of diamond-like gems. Splitting the double double is also easy at 80x. I have also resolved Polaris - a difficult double, as the main component's brightness tends to overwhelm the dim (mag 9.5) companion.

As delivered, I also had a problem with an off-center corrector plate. I returned the OTA to Celestron, and they got it back to me in 5 days. After the repair, I was able to collimate the scope to a fine Airy disk image.

The mount and tripod are mediocre. I guess Celestron had to cut a corner here. I plan to upgrade to a more stable system. I also had the problem of tightness in the gears preventing proper motor tracking - adjustment of the gear mount corrected this easily. I solve the problem of tripod instability - somewhat - by keeping the legs retracted and observing while seated.

My overall score of 9 is due to an 8 for the mount. The optics deserve a 10!

Overall Rating: 9
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Celestron G-5
I updated my comments on this scope after placing a vote way long above
Optics are truely amazing, exactly the comments described made at the above vote.
One point I must add is I was able to discern the cassini division at 51x(with meade super wide 24.5).
Ok, just don't believe it =)
And I bought a second hand SP(old vixen mount) for the OTA. ROCK solid!

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Celestron G-5
I received a G-5 as a gift last January. The corrector plate is undersized, the

secondary was of center by about .25 inches. The scoped showed severe sperical

aberation. The declination shaft is not even close to perpendicular to the OTA

mounting plate. I sent the OTA to Celestron for repairs and it came back even worse, with the collimation screws tightened so much the secondary optics were pinched. So I've done Celestron's work for them. I centered the secondary, rotated the corrector plate until I hit a sweet spot, correctly recollimated the pinched secondary optics, machined and hand fit the mount to correct for the slanted declination shaft, installed bushings(bronze & nylon) on the declination

shaft, and now the scope works as advertised. Bud buddyl@pe.net

Overall Rating: 1
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