Celestron
C5+
No longer manufactured, but occasionally sold on
AstroMart
Another prized telescope in my collection is the
diminutive yet deceptively powerful C5+, a Celestron
5-inch f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) on an
eye-catching single-arm fork mount with a servo motor
drive powered by a single 9v PP3 battery. This instrument
made its debut in 1992 and production carried on for
another seven years until the fully-computerised NexStar
5 appeared on the scene. Mine is one of the later models
since it has Starbright optical coatings and a
declination motor, also powered from the battery in the
drive base via a coiled black cable.
What makes a C5+ so special? It's partly because this was
about the time that Celestron was producing some of its
best 5-inch SCT optics. NASA also gave the 'scope a huge
seal of approval by using the all American-made 'scope on
a number of Space Shuttle missions. With a tube assembly
just 28cm long, 15cm in diameter and weighing around 3kg,
it strikes a nice balance between portability and having
a large enough aperture to do useful work. The optical
tube of the C5+ is attached to the fork arm by a dovetail
bar, so it may be easily removed should you wish to mount
it on a photo tripod (though do note that the dovetail
size is not quite the same as the Vixen specification).
I eventually fitted an Orion right-angled erect
image 6x30 finder and Lumicon Sky Vector 1 digital
setting circles to my C5+ which has made an already
tremendously useful grab-and-go instrument even more
versatile. Knowing that I have an accurate battery
operated drive (which, incidentally, lasts several tens
of hours) and a battery operated computerised pointing
system means that I don't have to carry a rechargeable
power pack into the field. I usually leave a Celestron
8-24mm zoom eyepiece in the dielectric diagonal, too. So,
there you have it — my portable observatory!
