Overview
General Features
- 11" EdgeHD Optics
- Celestron premium StarBright XLT coatings
- 9x50 finderscope with quick release bracket to help accurately find objects
- 2" Star diagonal provides more comfortable viewing position when observing objects that are high in the sky
HD Features
- New aplanatic Schmidt telescope design produces aberration-free images across a wide field of view
- Cooling vents allow hot air to be released from behind the primary mirror
- Fastar compatible for fast f/2 imaging
Description
With an optical tube assembly weighing only 28 lbs, this telescope is still portable enough to be taken to dark skies, and has 89% more light gathering power than an 8" telescope and 40% more than the 9.25".
New Optical Design
The EdgeHD optical system takes all of the compact power popularized by the Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) and combines it with an improved high definition optical system for wide field, astrograph quality images.
As a visual instrument, EdgeHD optics deliver pinpoint images even with your widest field eyepiece. You can search for all of the Messier Catalog objects, and see hundreds of other equally interesting NGC, IC and Caldwell objects with amazing clarity. For astroimaging, the EdgeHD optics produce aberration-free images across your favorite CCD or DSLR camera. All EdgeHD optics are designed to produce an extremely flat focal plane precise enough to match the strict tolerances of the largest commercial CCD detectors, allowing all stars to be in tight focus to the very edge of the chip.
EdgeHD Whitepaper
The Celestron Product Development team has released a whitepaper outlining the technology behind EdgeHD. This paper describes the development goals, design decisions, optical performance, and their practical realization in 8-, 9.25-, 11-, and 14-inch apertures. We include cross-sections of the EdgeHD series, comparative spot diagrams for the EdgeHD and competing coma-free Schmidt-Cassegrain designs, a table with specifications for visual and imaging, graphics showing how to place sensors at the optimum back-focus distance, and details on the construction and testing of the EdgeHD telescope series.
Click here to download the whitepaper.
Diffraction Limited
Some companies boast that their telescopes give diffraction limited stars in the very center of the field of view. EdgeHD optics not only produce diffraction limited stars on axis, but maintain diffraction limited stars across the entire field of view of many of the most popular astrophotography cameras. Even at the very edge of a full frame camera chip, the EdgeHD 11" delivers stars of less than 2 arc seconds.
The EdgeHD 11" optics produce a focal plane three-times flatter than the standard equivalent SCT telescope with diffraction limited stars beyond the entire SBIG STL4020CM field of view!
Along with the newly designed optics, the EdgeHD also has re-designed mechanics guaranteed to help you get the maximum performance from your instrument.
Features Include:
Mirror Locks To hold the mirror in place and reduce image shift during imaging.
Tube Vents - Each vent has an integrated 60 micron micro-mesh filter allowing hot air to be released from behind the primary mirror.
Fastar Versatility All EdgeHD optical tubes are equipped with a removable secondary mirror for fast f/2 CCD imaging. Not only does imaging in the FASTAR configuration allow for exposure times that are 25 times faster than at f/10, but also yields a field of view five times wider. A perfect combination for imaging your favorite wide field objects in a fraction of the time. (FASTAR imaging requires a third party lens assembly in place of the secondary mirror).
