Starbright multicoated optics: Starbright multicoatings are standard equipment. Celestron is the only major manufacturer to provide multicoated optics as standard equipment at no extra cost on all their catadioptric telescopes. These Starbright multicoatings include 5-layer vacuum-deposited high reflectivity primary and secondary mirror coatings of aluminum enhanced with titanium dioxide and overcoated with a protective layer of silicon monoxide (quartz) for long life. These multicoatings visibly increase contrast on subtle lunar, planetary, and nebula details when compared with competitive scopes with standard single-layer aluminum mirror coatings. They also give you higher light transmission for brighter deep space images and shorter exposure times during photography. High transmission magnesium fluoride antireflection coatings on both sides of the Schmidt corrector lens assure minimum light loss and high contrast.

Hand-figured optics: Hand figuring the optical system is a complex optical procedure done on a commercial basis only by Celestron. Four separate optical tests are made on every set of Schmidt-Cassegrain optics, using a double-pass laser autocollimator - an Airy disc inspection, a test for spherical aberration by examining the diffraction images on both sides of focus, a Ronchi grating test, and a knife edge test. A skilled optician evaluates these tests, and then fabricates a precision pitch lap and delicately hand polishes the secondary mirror to smooth the optical figure and reduce any small residual zonal defects to vanishingly small levels. Done a few strokes at a time, and testing constantly to evaluate their effect, this final hand-figuring can take hours. But, when it is finished, the optical performance makes every tedious hour of handcrafting well worth the effort.