Celestron
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The company was U.S. owned until April 2005 when it was acquired by SW Technology Corporation, a Delaware company and affiliate of Synta Technology Corporation in China. Synta is a leading manufacturer of astronomy equipment that are copies of original designs by companies such as Celestron and Vixen.
Celestron had struggled to remain profitable in an aggressive but limited market, in particular following protracted legal disputes with its US competitor Meade. The change of ownership was generally considered a good move in the amateur astronomy community as it provides Celestron with much needed capital to meet expansion and research and development costs. This is important to ensure Meade has a viable rival to stimulate innovation.
Celestron was the first commercial manufacturer of the Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, introducing its "C8" 8-inch telescope in the mid-1960s. The telescope, with its trademark matte orange tube (changed to glossy black in 1980), has been a popular large aperture, long-focal length telescope in a shortened optical tube. This design allows for easier transport than an equivalent Newtonian reflector telescope.
The "C-8" was followed by the "C5", "C11", and "C14" in the 1970s -- well before Meade started producing SCTs larger than 10 inches in the mid-1990s. Meade used to produce a 4" Schmidt-Cassegrain, but has since gone to Maksutov-Cassegrain designs in their smaller ETX style telescopes.
A "C9.25" was introduced in the late 1990s, as an intermediate-sized scope when Meade started producing 12, 14, and 16-inch SCTs. The largest production telescope produced by Celestron is the "C-20" observatory class photographic Astrograph telescope introduced in 2004 (based on a corrected Dall-Kirkham design).
In 2005, Celestron introduced a "C6" Schmidt-Cassegrain mounted on a German equatorial mount. It also introduced its own computerized alignment procedure (for all altazimuth computerized Celestron telescopes), known as "SkyAlign," that simplifies alignment for computerized telescopes.
Celestron produces a range of 2.4 to 6-inch refractor telescopes, 6 to 10-inch traditional reflector telescopes, 90mm & 130mm Maksutov-Cassegrain spotting scope and a range of 6 to 12-inch Dobsonian telescopes known as the "Starhopper" series.
Celestron also produce a number of introductory telescopes.
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