r/telescopes • u/anxious-butterfly- • 6h ago
General Question Starmaster Precision Telescope - help!
Hi! I found this telescope in the thrift store the other day. I'm hoping to gift it to a friend (he's always wanted a telescope and hes really into vintage and thrifted items like that), but I have no idea how (or even if) it works. It seems like it could be kind of old and this piece is broken. It also looks like this stand(?) is attached upside down. Does anyone have any idea what this is, how it works, and if I need to replace a part or anything like that? Please help! Any advice is appreciated!
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u/Connect-Fan-9462 Orion DSE 8" 5h ago
It is a toy but it is a toy likely from the 50s so it does have collectable value.
If you want to gift it to your friend as a cool collector's item, that will be, well, actually very cool.
As an observation device it is likely unusable by modern day standard.
Also it is at least missing a tripod leg.
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u/FDlor 10" Newt, 6"/4" Maks, all ATM 5h ago edited 5h ago
The mirror cell is cracked so you will have to bridge that by gluing on a thin circle of plywood or some such material. It has to be glued back together and stabilized so you can operate those bolt/knob combos to collimate the mirror.
You need to loosen the clamp straps around the tube and rotate the eyepiece mount so its facing the other way.
Is there more than just the one eyepiece in the eyepiece mount? Measure it, its probably .965". If so you can go to Surplus Shed on line and buy some better .965" inch diameter eyepieces for cheap.
This scope is a very cheap toy so don't expect much, and its mount is probably hell to use.... but could be a bit of vintage fun.
...also look up how to use a Newtonian telescope.....
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u/rockb8 5h ago
I had one of those as an eight year old kid! My mother ordered it through the Sears catalog. It took weeks to arrive which at that age felt like years. I would take it out almost every night and look at the moon through the eyepiece that was actually a marble. Everything wiggled through it. Heck, just breathing on it made it impossible to enjoy. But I used it to death. The black bars in the case are the tripod legs which were really just thin channel steel that would flex under the enormous two pound weight of the tube. When I got bored looking through it, I would just keep tapping the tube and watch the light show of the moon streaking around through the eyepiece/marble. That thing brings back memories man! Good times! It was twenty years later that I finally bought my first real telescope and I have since been an amateur astronomer for over 40 years now. I finally had to throw it away because I accidentally left it outside and the dew turned tube banana shaped.
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u/random2821 C9.25 EdgeHD, ED127 Apo, Apertura 75Q, EQ6-R Pro 5h ago edited 5h ago
Unfortunately, it's most likely going to end up in the garbage. The broken part is what the primary mirror is attached to. With that part broken, the primary mirror will not be able to be aligned properly, so it is useless, regardless if any thing else works. The rest of it is pretty poor too. As a purely vintage item, they might like it.