| The Orion StarBlast 6 is a surprisingly large aperture point-and-view altazimuth reflector that swivels smoothly on a sturdy, low-profile tabletop base. It’s a great gift for the young budding astronomer, one that won’t break Grandma or Grandpa’s birthday or holiday budget. It’s also a good second scope for Mom or Dad for spur-of-the-moment viewing when there’s not enough time to set up the big scope. It’s a nifty travel scope, as well as the right size scope to plop down on the patio table for quick glimpses of the sky between dunks in the pool on a hot summer night.
The StarBlast 6 comes pre-assembled and ready for action right out of the box. Just carry it outdoors by the handles built into the vertical arm of the base, place it on a patio table or on any convenient height flat surface, and let the fun begin. It weighs only 23.5 lbs., so it’s easy to carry. If you prefer, you can break down the StarBlast 6 into two separate components – a 12 lb. steel optical tube and an 11.5 lb. wooden base – to make transporting the scope easier.
Sky & Telescope magazine said of the StarBlast 6’s smaller 4.5” brother, “Orion’s spunky 4-1/2” StarBlast reflector is remarkably portable, easy to use, and provides nice views of the Moon, the planets, and beyond.” Astronomy magazine said of the 4.5” StarBlast, “Imagine a telescope that is small, light, has great optics, and costs less than $200. It’s not a dream – it’s Orion’s StarBlast, and the name says it all.”
For not much more money than the original 4.5” StarBlast, the StarBlast 6 gives you almost 78% more light gathering area than the smaller scope. That makes it easy to find faint deep space nebulas and galaxies, with a lot more faint detail visible. It has 33% higher resolution than the 4.5” scope, to show you more detail on the Moon, the planets, and in the binary stars and star clusters outside our solar system.
The StarBlast’s 28” long aluminum optical tube holds quality fast focal ratio f/5 telescope optics. The concave 150mm (6”) primary mirror is ground and polished to a true parabolic curvature to give you surprisingly good views of the Moon’s craters, the planets, star clusters, and more. It’s not an inexpensive (and far less sharp) spherical mirror of the type you’ll find on most other starter scopes. And, unlike many starter scopes, its primary and diagonal mirrors are fully collimatable for optimum performance. The primary mirror uses a push-pull locking collimation system. This keeps the scope optics collimated (aligned) almost indefinitely and makes it difficult for small and curious fingers to affect the scope’s performance. A collimation cap for the focuser lets you align the scope optics quickly by eye, with no other collimation tool required.
The scope has a wood tabletop altazimuth mount that’s surprisingly stable. There are no manual slow motion controls, but low friction Teflon bearings and an adjustable altitude tension control allow to move the mount smoothly from place to place in the sky by simply pushing the optical tube gently. A navigation knob at the front of the tube (shown in one of the feature images below) makes it easy to precisely point the StarBlast 6 in any direction you choose. Aiming the StarBlast is easy with the supplied EZ Finder II red dot finder. The short tube damps vibrations quickly, so there’s no long annoying wait for the image to stop shaking enough to see after you move the telescope.
The scope’s optical tube can be rotated in its mounting ring to bring the easy-to-use red dot finder and precision 1.25” rack and pinion focuser to the most convenient observing position.
The two supplied 1.25” Sirius Plössl eyepieces have a good 52° field of view, and show good contrast on bright objects like the Moon and planets. Bought separately, the eyepieces would have a total cost of more than $85! Their quality is good enough to let you use them with a much larger and more expensive scope, should you eventually decide to move up from the StarBlast 6 (which may be a long time coming, as it will take you years to run out of things to see in this excellent little scope).
The standard 25mm Sirius Plössl provides a magnification of 30x, while the supplied 10mm provides 75x, a pair of powers that will keep you happily observing for a long, long time. The 25mm (30x) eyepiece has a wide 1.73° field, almost three and a half times as wide as the full Moon, for good full disk lunar and deep space views. The 10mm (75x) eyepiece has enough power to show you surprisingly detailed views of the planets and star clusters. Other optional eyepieces will give you still higher and lower power capabilities as your observing interests and experience level expand. A handy three-eyepiece rack on the side of the scope keeps the eyepiece close at hand. The scope’s metal tube and aluminum-coated mirrors (quartz overcoated for long life) cool down to ambient temperature quickly, so there’s no wait to observe when you first go out.
Good views of lunar features by the hundreds; the rings of Saturn; the storm belts and moons of Jupiter; plus many, many of the best and brightest deep sky nebulas, galaxies, and star clusters – they’re all yours for the looking with the Orion StarBlast 6 . . . at a low price that’s almost too good to be true for a 6” scope that’s as convenient and fun to use as the StarBlast. |
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