Celestron Nexstar vs. CPC 11"

I am contemplating the purchase of a Celestron 11" sct. I would like to here from the Celestron experts out there about the quality of the mechanics and the optics of the new Celestrons since they have been bought out compared to the older stuff. Should I look for a good used Nexstar system or are the CPC 1100s as good or better?

DanL

I'm inexperienced and only have a CPC 1100, but have been very happy with it.

Maybe I'm more than the usual klutz, but find it nearly risky to fit the top-heavy and not lightweight CPC 1100 onto the tripod. Holding up that big heavy thing feeling around until the center pin drops down into the hole on the tripod head. Or however it works. Been a year since I did the task. I just remember that it seemed a difficult task to do.

With my level of klutziness, if I did that task routinely the odds seem pretty high I'd eventually drop the scope.

So I just home-made a scope cart (too cheap to buy one) and roll it out from the basement to the back patio.

Starizona now sells a landing pad attachment for the CPC 1100, which I'll probably buy if ever get non-lazy enough to tote the monster away from the house.

Another inexperienced comment which may be 'obvious' and useless--

For visual use, been very impressed with the rigidity of the tripod and mount. Even at high magnification, viewing seems quite 'un-wiggly'. If you touch the scope for focusing, you don't have to wait forever for vibrations to settle out, or hold yer breath hoping you don't knock the thing off-target.

The previous lighter-weight scopes&tripods were pretty wiggly at high mag.

I don't claim to be an expert, experienced maybe but no expert. I have not had the pleasure of using an NS but my CPC-1100 is excellent both mechanically and optically. If I had to rate the optics compared to the five C-11s I have owned this current system would tie at the top with an Ultima I rebuilt some years ago. A 250 line grating at 3 bands (outside focus) are straight and well defined with a clean edge. Out of focus patterns are very close to identical and on nights of good seeing the airy disk is well defined and of "textbook" quality.

I don't know if the optics were made in America but the Bob's Knobs I installed were metric. GOTO's are incredibly good. Tracking is superb.

Lunar/Planetary views are very good as long as the scope is cooled to ambient temperature and well collimated.

Hope this helps.

Keith

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