| While Celestron considers the C80ED primarily a terrestrial spotting scope, many observers have found that its ED optics make it a great scope for both casual and serious astronomy and astrophotography, as well an exceptional spotting scope. One of the lenses in its doublet optical system is made of costly ED (Extra-low Dispersion) glass. This provides excellent color correction and razor sharp images. It virtually eliminates the violet halos of chromatic aberration that you see around the Moon, planets, and bright stars in conventional achromatic refractors in its sensible price range. The optics are fully multicoated to maximize light transmission and clarity. Contrast-enhancing light baffles in the optical tube assure truly dark sky backgrounds and high terrestrial contrast. The Celestron C80ED has the good balance of aperture and focal length that you need in an all-purpose portable scope. You can use it as a low-power near rich field telescope, as a medium-power planetary telescope, as an astrograph for sharp wide field CCD images, as a terrestrial spotting scope, as a high quality telephoto lens, and more. For serious astronomy and astrophotography, the C80ED has a split ring mount with an attached dovetail bar that fits directly into the dovetail slot on the head of Celestron CG-5 Advanced Series equatorial and go-to mounts with no other adapter needed. The dovetail bar also fits the dovetail slots of Meade LXD-75 and Vixen Sphinx and Great Polaris Deluxe mounts. In addition, the dovetail bar has a 1/4"-20 thread hole that allows you to mount the 7.5 lb C80ED directly onto any good-quality photo tripod for casual astronomy or daytime terrestrial use such as vacations, birding, or nature studies. The scope comes with a 6 x 30mmm crosshair finderscope. Its images are upright and right-reading, so that the star patterns you see in the finder are oriented the same way as they are on a star chart. This makes it easier to locate objects and starhop your way around the sky. The Celestron C80ED has a 2" rack and pinion focuser with large ribbed focusing knobs, making it easy to focus in cold weather when wearing gloves or mittens. The focuser drawtube terminates in a 2" eyepiece holder so you can use an optional 2" star diagonal. A supplied 1.25" eyepiece adapter fits into the 2" drawtube. This 1.25" adapter has external T-threads. These let you use the C80ED as a very high quality 600mm (12x) f/7.5 telephoto lens by simply adding an inexpensive T-ring to connect your 35mm camera body to the 1.25" eyepiece adapter. A thumbscrew on the focuser lets you lock the drawtube in position once you’ve achieved the correct photographic focus. A camera-type snap-in objective lens cover protects the optics when the scope is not in use. The scope comes with a 45° viewing angle image-erecting diagonal that accepts standard 1.25" diameter eyepieces. The supplied eyepiece is a 25mm four-element Plössl that provides a magnification of 24x and a 2.1° field of view (over four lunar diameters). The eyepiece has a usable eye relief of 16mm, for virtually unvignetted views when wearing eyeglasses. While the image-erecting diagonal is excellent for terrestrial observing, it puts a tiny spike of light on every bright point in the image. This is not noticeable during daytime observing, but will reduce the resolution of star clusters, binary stars, and planetary details during astronomical use. Adding an optional conventional 90° star diagonal eliminates the light spike to improve your astronomical viewing, as well as make for more comfortable viewing when observing objects near the zenith. There are few optical systems that combine into one compact and inexpensive body a serious astronomical telescope, a quality astrograph for wide-field CCD imaging and 35mm photography, a terrestrial spotting scope, and a top-quality telephoto lens – but the Celestron C80ED does it all beautifully. Whether you want to observe the skies from your back yard on the spur of the moment, or travel round the world with a very portable telescope that will reveal and photograph everything nearby and distant, you’ll find it hard to beat this truly exceptional and very economical Celestron ED refractor.
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Terestrial Photography