Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2015
So, after getting the Explore Scientific ED80 APO triplet, and an EXOS2-PMC8 GoTo mount, this little scope wasn't getting used much anymore, so, I figured I'd do something with it. First thing was ditch the dark color, after having the ED80 in satin white the boring burgundy red in the StarMax really needed to go... so decided to make it white using appliance paint. IMO its better to have white equipment at night so you can easily see it. I also powder coated the EQ-1 mount too... but that is another review, see pictures of the finished product, and the flocking inside the tube.
So, upon removal of the back and front assemblies, the first thing you'll see is why these scopes are so inexpensive. The inside of the tube walls reflect light like a mirror!!, and the inside of the little tube where you look through the eyepiece? might as well been made out of glow in the dark paint! So, since I had nothing to lose by trying, I figured I'd learn how to flock a telescope, or do the contrast mod, how they call it. First thing was what to use to flock it with, there is a lot of stuff online that talks about flocking paper etc, but I knew of something that doesn't reflect much light, and that I had readily available: High Build Black Primer, yep, its as dark as a black hole and doesn't shine when lit at at an angle. (don't use flat black, its rather shiny at an angle tho)
So, after some work I got the main tube coated in satin white and black primer inside, the difference was pretty obvious when holding it up against the light, where before you had all kinds of shine, now there was very little. So, after seeing how much of a difference this made I was, why stop here?
Then I noticed the little cover around the small center mirror on the front lens its made out of some sort of shiny plastic... so that had to go too. Used a small brush and painted it with the same black primer, another big win: barely no reflections at all.
Now, the tube where the main mirror slides, this was a tricky one, b/c I quickly realized you couldn't apply much, if any, paint to the outer part of the tube, b/c the focusing mechanism won't slide back in, so after removing the primer, to allow for the focusing mechanism to slide, the upper part looked much better than what the old shiny paint did.
Then looked through the tube and behold, shine galore... it was really bad... so I first tried using the primer straight into the tube, and while it was difficult to get an even coat, the results where already pretty substantial so I had to make it better. So, in order to improve this I decided to get creative and needed to roughen the surface inside the tube too without making the metal shine (no sanding), so to do that I took a used toothbrush with a bit of acetone and started rotating the tube around the toothbrush while pushing it inside. Did this a couple of times to ensure paint was pretty rough but still had no metal exposed... lo and behold, once I looked through the tube into a bright light bulb and there was zero light shining on the sides of the inside tube... it was now time to put the telescope back together. After collimating it again, proceeded to test it out looking at some bright stuff at night, like streetlights, those were particularly tough before, and in general when looking at very bright stuff the scope was rather bad, had a lot of "fog like in the entire view", the image is now dark where its supposed to be dark, the contrast enhancement was really impressive... Anyhow, long story short, after doing the flocking all the light haze is now gone.
My scope uses an Orion dielectric diagonal, and its mounted using rings b/c the EQ-1 mount doesn't use dovetail... might change that if I get a better mount than the EQ-1, but certainly after doing this contrast mod the scope is no longer on the chopping block. Once skies clear I might have to try it out again.
I guess this takes care of my "not enough light grasp" matter, it wasn't that it didn't grasp light, is that it lacked contrast, that is now fixed!
====OLD 2-star REVIEW: Not enough light grasp, mount is worthless, lost collimation after a couple of months of use...
If you are serious about getting into astronomy as a hobby and not give up then this is not the scope for you. I was a beginner when I bought this guy and should've known what I know now, I would've gone with an SCT or an APO triplet refractor with a GEM computer mount.
I've had this scope for almost 1 year now and after using it on a regular basis I have to say that I do regret purchasing it. The scope in itself is nicely built and whatnot; but that's where nice things end for this guy.
So, where to begin?... ah yes... The mount, well, the alt-az mount that comes with this guy is worthless (for stargazing)... period. If you have any real aspirations to do any stargazing using this scope you will need a real GEM (German Equatorial Mount) Why? Because due to the ridiculous magnification this guy has everything will go out of view so fast that by the time you've fiddled with the dang thing to get the object in the center of the view, its already moved out of the view... Forget about letting other people see things that you've put in view. Oh, and not to mention that you'll need a place to set it in the great outdoors... and tables don't happen to grow in the middle of the field.
NOTE: I won't go into mounts much since this a telescope review, but just to throw it out there: Get the BEST mount you can afford, trust me on this: get the first go-to, tracking computerized German Equatorial Mount that you can afford; crap scope with a crap mount is four times crap. (I personally would avoid the alt-az computerized mounts especially if you have aspirations to do astrophotography) Now, if you decide to stick with the supplied mount then let me break it down for you beforehand as to how you'll be spending your time: 10% of your time sitting outside will be spent just figuring out what to look for, 80% will be aiming the scope and figuring out if its the right star you're looking at.... another 9% will be keeping the thing aimed and that last 1% left you'll actually get to see something, out of focus and too dim. So if you out for an hour, you'll spend 6 minutes figuring out where to look, 48 minutes aiming the scope, 5.4 minutes keeping the thing aimed and 30 seconds actually looking through the scope.
Viewfinder? The supplied red dot is a futile attempt to "point at things"; Might be good if you know your way around the sky, but if you are a beginner like I was, its useless. Oh, BTW, don't forget to turn it off after you're done, otherwise the next time you go to use guess what: its battery dead!! Get a real viewfinder, a decent 9x50 will do... or even better get a laser.
Diagonal? Get a dielectric diagonal ASAP, the difference is noticeable in dim objects, especially when using Gen3 Night Vision gear to do intensified astronomy.
Filters? They are fairly decent, although they have some internal reflections; The neutral density filter is probably the nicest and most useable filter of all of them.
Eyepieces? If you wear glasses like I do, forget about the 10mm one... the 25mm is decent.
Focuser? In cold weather it sticks, as in, it won't move for a few turns then it will catch... so all of the sudden you go from out of focus too near, to out of focus too far...
F/stop? Well f/stop is the ratio between the focal length and the aperture, and you want that to be as low as possible. At f/13.8 this thing is just as blind as a bat: its just too high, too dang high; in fact, its so stupid high that even with an Omni VII military Gen3 night vision device attached to the back of this telescope I can barely see faint DSOs (forget about seeing anything beyond the planets, stars and some bright nebulae by looking through the eyepiece) Oh, and don't bother with filters either, I have an O-III and H-Alpha filters that are amazing when used in combination with MILSPEC night vision magnifiers but when you stick any of those and point the scope with the same Gen3 night vision to bright things like say, the Andromeda Galaxy, you see literally nothing in H-Alpha... A focal reducer barely alleviates this, but in exchange for a minimally noticeable improvement when using night vision, it adds a big vignetting circle around the edges so it looks like you're looking through a toilet paper roll...
Focal Length? As stated by the f/Stop, its way too high for the puny aperture this scope has...
Aperture? Same as f/Stop, might as well buy a good pair of astronomy grade binoculars before you buy this. For the price a pair of decent 20x80 binoculars will smoke this and provide a stereo viewing experience which is much more enjoyable than dim/blurry things (or not seeing things at all)
Resolving power? Also related to aperture, in simple terms its said that the telescope max zoom is double of the aperture, which would've put this scope at ~180 max Zoom; however, I would be generous if if I say this scope would be useable at anything beyond 125 zoom (with the 10mm supplied eyepiece you get x125 zoom) but at this point things are so dim that you can't really make anything out of the blur... Good if you only want to see the craters on the Moon; but how many times can you see the craters of the Moon?
Temperature equalization? You might be wondering what the heck is that? Well, so did I when I started down this hobby until the cold weather in Michigan set... then I began to see things rippling around... turned out it was the difference in temperatures between the air inside the scope and the air outside the scope... which caused turbulence inside the tube. If its cold/hot outside this guy requires about ~20-30 minutes of sitting at the place where you are going to do stargazing before you can even dream of getting crisp views of anything... otherwise it looks like heat coming of a sunbathed road in the middle of the desert...
Collimation, it will go out of collimation, no matter how much you baby it, mine did; and once it did it was never the same. I can't get anything as sharp as it was when new... its not a mater of IF, its a matter of WHEN, and collimating the Starmax is a nightmare for a beginner. Might as well sell it at that point.
Dew, yes, get a Dew Shield for this telescope (or any telescope for that matter), otherwise once it cools down at night everything in the scope will be hazy due to condensation in your objective lens.
I might've left something in the tank, but the point is that this scope lacks; it seriously lacks for astronomical purposes, and for the price you are better served with some good binoculars and a tripod adapter. Truth is that once you get past the big ticket targets, like the Sun (with a filter) the Moon, the few bright planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and somewhat Mars) and adventure into the deeper skies doing fainter stuff like Neptune, Uranus, faint nebulae.... this scope will simply fall flat on its face.
My advice would be that for your first telescope you get the one with the biggest aperture with the lowest f/Stop number in the smallest package that you can afford (usually this means short focal lengths, which is perfectly fine, just get a shorter focal length eyepiece) Avoid those cheap eBay and Amazon refractors and newtonians, all those suffer from color aberrations, comma, astigmatism... etc..., you won't see things sharp no matter how hard you try... oh, and don't fall the for the Dobsonian aperture at low price trick either; these dob scopes are just too big to be carried around, especially if you are a beginner; now, don't get me wrong they are impressive to look through, but the lack of a computerized mounts and their large size is the wost mistake a beginner can make.
As a seasoned beginner the only two scope types I would only consider buying at this point would be a small low f/Stop SCT or any Triplet APO Refractor (emphasis in TRIPLET) The rest? a waste of time for a beginner.
