"Orion Telescopes and Binoculars showroom on De Anza Blvd, Cupertino..my fave NorCal hangout"
Hahah I know I am a nerd. I know I am a geek. I am a geek for all things astro and telescopes. And when telescopes come to mind, the first place I think of is Orion Telescopes and Binoculars. Now I know what you guys are thinking...isn't he like a Celestron man? Well I have a whole heap of Celestron scopes. But my heart will always belong to Orion. Why? I don't really know. I grew up with Celestron, and Celestron scopes. I did not really own a Orion scope till 2005 (and a second hand one at that, a Orion 80ST that flew all the way from Hawaii to brisbane, Australia. My first brand new Orion scope came in 2007 when I visited California and purchased a floor model Orion StarBlast 4.5" from the Watsonville warehouse). Maybe I grew up with a romantic notion of Orion. I look at everything Orion with rosy hued glasses! They used to send me their brochures (more like a magazine to me). Yes Orion used to send their catalogs to international customers!!!! I read their brochure from cover to cover, over and over again until the catalog fell apart (I still have it and its now held together with cellophane tape)! Celestron never had something like that. Or Meade for that matter. Their brochure (or catalog) was jam packed full of information, and nice photos of all those glossy telescopes I could not afford back in the day. I guess that was what did me in. If you have been following my blog, every trip up to NorCal to visit friends finds me ending up at the Orion showroom in Cupertino. Man I love that place. I always find something to buy there, since they always have surplus stocks and nicknacks lying around from their warehouse in Watsonville (which is now closed to customers to make more room for staff members). I find more smallish parts to buy at the Cupertino store that I do at the Watsonville shopfront and warehouse. This trip was no different. There were heaps of astrobargains on the showroom floor. When I was there last weekend, they had several OTA's, two de-dobbed Orion4.5XT OTA's (and one of them was from the earlier batch made by GS!), a 90mm Orion white tubed refractor with tube rings, a Orion StarSeeker II 130mm OTA (which I bought!), a complete 102f/5 StarSeeker II refractor (I think it was over $200 off for that one), and a couple of small EQ1 mounts and dob dolly and dob pod. I was actually hoping for the small scope bonanza like they had last Thanksgiving, where that had several small scopes (including some classic Japanese made Orion 60mm long focal length!). My dream now is to get one of those white tubed vintage Orion ones. Oh well we will have to wait and see. Anyway here are some piccies I took at the Cupertino showroom. I always go there to gawk at all the nice metallic scopes. I will own one of them 14-16" truss GOTO dobs one day....one dayyyyy.....anyways end of my rant...
"Small Orion EQ and alt-az scopes on the showroom floor. I simply love their metallic aqua blue scope colors. I have one of them SpaceProbe 3 alt-az scopes "
"Orion tabletop dobs: from left to right Orion 6" and 4.5" StarBlast, Orion SkyScanner 100 and Orion Funscope 76mm...I currently own the SkyScanner, a brilliant lil dobbie, and have in the past owned the StarBlast 4.5" (both the dob and the imaging OTA version), as well as two Funscopes"
"Orion StarBlast 80 and 4.5 Autotrackers...their new range of tracking tabletop dobs..cute scopes for sure...plus you can add GOTO by just getting one of them StarSeeker hand paddles"
"Orion 8" Sky View pro scope"
"Orion solid tube XT GOTO dobs and their XX16g monster GOTO dob (almost to the ceiling, on a Orion Heavy Duty Cart!)"
"Orion Classic 8XT and 10XT dobs and the XX14i Intelliscope dob"
"Orion Sirius, Atlas and Atlas Pro GOTO mounts...I need one of these got CCD camming lol"
Looking forward to visiting the Orion showroom. I'm not interested in any scopes from their current catalog, but like you, I'm curious about some of their vintage/discontinued stock, if they have any left (e.g. 60mm F/15 or 80mm F/11 or F/15 achromat).
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