I bought an AD8 Apertura form High Point Scientific in August last year (2022). I have enjoyed it ever since! I 've seen five planets, the Pleades, Orion Nebula, Andromeda and several other objects including ZTF2022 Comet and several satellites! All this despite the light pollution around where I live. I'm just starting out in Astronomy and this gives me so much enjoyment and value. It is really is an excellent telescope! Thanks High Point Scientific!
I bought this scope over 2 years ago and I have to say, it’s incredible! I thought by now I would be writing a negative review given long enough at the eyepiece your bound to see the cracks in the scope over time. There are none! If you are looking for that wow factor, your going to need a 8” and up aperture. The focuser still holds up to the day I bought it. It is a scope that you will end up keeping and never feeling like you need to upgrade your visual observation telescope. It’s obviously not intended for Astrophotography ( yes you can cheat it and pop off a few good shots for yourself and friends ) all in all you can’t go wrong purchasing this instrument. The optics are amazing! The quality of build totally holds up! It’s a win ! Thank you High Point for putting the consumer first on this one. Total bang for your buck!
I got this from you guys in august and it’s been really nice, you can take some nice planetary images and even some bright nebula like The Orion Nebula, and even see the core of the Andromeda Galaxy
4 years ago I purchased my first telescope at the age of 60 from High Point. It was the Zhumell 8" and I have been very happy with the purchase. Every Halloween we get tons of trick or treaters and decided to pull out my Dob. and let everyone that wants to take a look at what planets are available...
I’m definitely going to buy this bad boy. Thank you so much for this video. I’ve been waiting a while to buy it and idk if I will immediately, but it will be bought. If anyone can help me out, what are the don’t do’s with this scope or any really? I don’t know anything, i mean anything! So for a first timer please share your tips, from not touching things with fingers, bumping something, looking at certain objects, etc. thank you for any help! ❤
This telescope looks amazing, and as a person looking for his first telescope, this has everything i am look for in a telescope. I will definitely be buying this hopefully soon.
I want this telescope so bad!!! I've been drooling over it for a long time now, and would love to have it as my first telescope. Unfortunately I'm finding it being hard to pull the trigger on something rather expensive for me. I'm one who finds it hard to justify spending money on non-necessities especially in the Times we find ourselves. Hopefully with fingers crossed I can one day catch it on sale or something, because I love astronomy so much and want to personally see the images I dream about!
Thank you for a wonderful video. I've been looking for my own Christmas present this year, I think I've just found one. I have 23 years old EQ telescope 150x750, it works great in observing Saturn. I just want to have a new telescope, and besides, I want to get my own Christmas present this year. Thanks again!
The review was great though the presentation was distracting ... Tegan's head and hand movements seem exaggerated and unnecessarily intense. Nevertheless, I am going to give this telescope some serious consideration.
I just got this scope. Also looking to pick up more eyepieces. I want one for planet viewing and one for deep space viewing. Any recommendations, willing to go for the higer price ones made televue etc.
Great question! You could attach a laser with adhesive velcro, or you can replace the finder with a laser finder all together www.highpointscientific.com/adm-accessories-532-green-laser-pointer-and-accessories-lzr-532kit
Great question! You would need to use a Barlow with t-adapter, as well as a camera-specific M42 t-ring, in order to achieve focus with a DSLR. The Celestron Universal T Adapter & 2X Barlow Lens Assembly or the Apertura 2X Barlow Lens with T2 Threads - 1.25" could be used to make the connection.
It means that the resolution is only limited by diffraction. I presume this to mean that the resolution is not limited by shortcomings of the telescope itself. I've not seen this phrase used before so I suspect it is more about marketing.
Great question! The highest usable power for a well tuned 8" Newtonian like the Apertura AD8 is roughly 400x (50x per inch of aperture), but only under excellent conditions on bright high contrast targets like the moon and bright double stars. If you're using a 2x barlow then that would equate to a 6mm eyepiece.
I don't have this model but theoretically, every telescope acts like the lens of a camera. So you can just get an adapter to connect your Canon onto the eyepiece of the telescope. Then you would have use manual mode on your camera body and focus in what you want to take a picture of. I would start with the moon. You can also get an adapter for a smartphone but this doesn't work nearly as well as a camera body adapter. The adapter I bought for my Nikon cost me $18 I believe so they're not expensive. Good luck!
@ChrisJohnson-yw2ky you would generally use a dslr without an eyepiece at prime focus but there are eyepiece projection adapters that hold smaller plossl size eyepieces, as well as some eyepieces having threads that can be adapted to t rings like the hyperion and some zoom eyepieces reveal t threads when you take the eyecup off. As well as universal cell phone adapters that attach to most eyepieces. But without tracking you are limited to the moon and.bigger planets like jupiter and saturn, and sometimes mars when it is at its closest approach
Omegon is just the European company that is selling the same GSO scopes. Apertura came first. Yes they are basically the same scope. GSO has been selling scopes with other company names on them for decades. The first post usa/discovery made celestron stathoppers were made by GSO before they switched to synta, as well as orion before they also switched to synta. Prior to 2005 in the USA, Hardin sold GSO scopes with the Deep Space hunter dobs, star-hoc eq mounted reflectors and refractors and the Terra hoc az mounted refractors. And after hardin, DBA Deep space observer and zhumell was the option, later followed by Apertura and TPO (opt house brand). I believe Apertura was high point's house brand, and astrotech is astronomics' house brand but I'm not sure if they had dobs, they mainly focused on WO style refractors at first
The AD8 would be a noticeable difference in terms of views but we wouldnt consider a "wow factor" type of increase if you had them side by side. That being said, starting with a 10" would, absolutely, provide you with more light gathering power thus acess to dimmer deep sky objects. The difference is nice. The AD12 would show a very noticeable difference from the AD! The difference between the 10 and 12 would be smaller than the difference between the 10 and the 8 meaning you would notice the increase in aperture going from the ad8 to the ad10 than you would going from the ad10 to the ad12. Some recommend starting with the 8" and when you are ready to upgrade, the ad12 is waiting for you! If you want a good middle spot, the 10" is great and really is a deep sky object hunter. Hope this helps!
@@highpointscientificone example of where a 10 is much better is viewing globular clusters from light polluted areas. In darker skies they are more closely matched since dark skies are aperture equalizers. Though other.than the benefits of f6 vs f5, I generally prefer a 10. Almost 20 years ago, a DBA DSO (a gso option at that time) 10" dob was a huge upgrade/addition to my hardin 8"f4 (also a GSO, the last of the rack and pinion era), but that f4 limited to lower power visual use and I mainly bought it for imaging as well as visual, being my first scope larger than 5". I sold all of my reflectors, hardin 6"f5, 6" f8 dob (regret that), 8"f4 and DBA 10" dob after getting great samples of a deforked 8" LX200R, and a C11/G11, as well as televue 101 and pronto, and a stellarvue m3 for "easy as dob" visual use with tv101, c4r and 8"lx200R. I had all of my possessions stolen out of storage back in 2018.when I was going through a rough time, kicked when down. I started back up in 2020 with a $100 used orion XT8, followed by an old 10" lx6 (premiere f10, I wouldn't have wanted an f6.3), that i got in trade for the losmandy tripod, weights and piggyback rings the tweakers didnt know enough to take), and not long after, an older GSO R+P starhopper 10 (needs a recoat but still puts up a decent but.dimmer than usual image) for $60, which obviously got more use than that meade monstrosity with its attached fork mount and that super wedge/field tripod monstrosity (the c11/g11 was much easier to deal with). As well as another $100 find in an xt6, with a usable but plastic focuser (my DSH6 had a metal focuser, and was $99 NEW during the hardin fire sale). I was going to sell the xt8, and lent it out to the prospective buyer, but she couldn't lift it and I ended up picking it back up and lent my lightbridge 114 as a temporary scope while I worked on fixing up an older vixen 60mm f15 refractor which was better for her and her location, roof access in downtown LA, solar system objects only, and she was half japanese and dug japanese made stuff. At that point I fell in love with the 8 again and decided to keep it, maybe because the mirror didn't need be be recoated, but it was also liftable as one piece (spring system allows this, no chance of tube coming off the base)- where the 10, not so much. Basically I could see reason for having both the 8 and the 10, and even the 6 for the trifecta. But Alas 2021 was also a really bad year for me, losing my van to a.corrupt city and county, who stole-pounded it and conspired with another county to make sure I would be unable to get it out before it was auctioned. Why? Because they saw it was loaded with telescopes, music instruments and amps. And that included my xt8, the 60mm vixen, a 127 mak, an ancient cg5, a nexstar GT, and a 102 f6.5 achromat, and a small case of plossls, barlow, filters and some orion flat fields and surely other stuff I am not remembering. And to add insult to injury, I was denied return of my 114 tabletop dob, but since I was planning on using it on the GT as a wide field scope, as well as goto assist (with green laser, or just match where the.red dot was pointed) for my 10" or 8" (dob or classic C8 which a friend gave me an offer I couldn't refuse to replace my old 8"), it wasn't a huge loss since I didn't have the mount anymore, and got the scope for only $40 anyway. It did have excellent optics despite the secondary being glued to the stalk slightly askew. Synta made, same optics as starblast. But the biggest loss was the van, so I can't even haul big scopes.anymore if I wanted to. Though the stuff inside would have added up to more than the van was worth as well, the scopes may have been on the low end, but the music gear wasnt. At least my main cases of eyepieces, my main eq mount with motor drives, an astroview with upgraded tripod options (the original aluminum one was with the cg5 in van), weren't in the van, but all but my 4lb counterweights were, so my 102mm f10 can't be used until I get at least a 7lb weight. So for now it is just an ST80 and an etx90 tube that can be used on my main mount, and I would prefer to use my 102 f10, especially to take to outreach events. That or the c8, but my power tank was also in the van.
If anyone is conaidering buying this scope, DO IT!! Best decision ive made. Thanks HPS
I have it. And I agree
Hi compare this to 8se ? Any big difference?
I bought an AD8 Apertura form High Point Scientific in August last year (2022). I have enjoyed it ever since! I 've seen five planets, the Pleades, Orion Nebula, Andromeda and several other objects including ZTF2022 Comet and several satellites! All this despite the light pollution around where I live. I'm just starting out in Astronomy and this gives me so much enjoyment and value. It is really is an excellent telescope! Thanks High Point Scientific!
Nice man! i hope to buy one myself, but dosen´t really have the money to it right now.. I hope your enyouing it! :)
I bought this scope over 2 years ago and I have to say, it’s incredible! I thought by now I would be writing a negative review given long enough at the eyepiece your bound to see the cracks in the scope over time. There are none! If you are looking for that wow factor, your going to need a 8” and up aperture. The focuser still holds up to the day I bought it. It is a scope that you will end up keeping and never feeling like you need to upgrade your visual observation telescope. It’s obviously not intended for Astrophotography ( yes you can cheat it and pop off a few good shots for yourself and friends ) all in all you can’t go wrong purchasing this instrument. The optics are amazing! The quality of build totally holds up! It’s a win ! Thank you High Point for putting the consumer first on this one. Total bang for your buck!
I wish this was around 5 years ago. I have too much equipment with no regrets. Super nice demonstration. Thank you.
I got this from you guys in august and it’s been really nice, you can take some nice planetary images and even some bright nebula like The Orion Nebula, and even see the core of the Andromeda Galaxy
That's awesome. I can't wait to buy one!
4 years ago I purchased my first telescope at the age of 60 from High Point. It was the Zhumell 8" and I have been very happy with the purchase. Every Halloween we get tons of trick or treaters and decided to pull out my Dob. and let everyone that wants to take a look at what planets are available...
Just bought an AD10 from the site. Excited to get it set up and gaze at the sky with my fiance and 3 year old.
Sounds like a great time. Enjoy!
I have a question. How do you power the fan on? Do you need a power bank with you? or does it come with something to power it on
might be a few months late but mine just came in today and it has a battery pack that looks like it takes AA
I’m definitely going to buy this bad boy. Thank you so much for this video. I’ve been waiting a while to buy it and idk if I will immediately, but it will be bought. If anyone can help me out, what are the don’t do’s with this scope or any really? I don’t know anything, i mean anything! So for a first timer please share your tips, from not touching things with fingers, bumping something, looking at certain objects, etc. thank you for any help! ❤
This telescope looks amazing, and as a person looking for his first telescope, this has everything i am look for in a telescope. I will definitely be buying this hopefully soon.
I want this telescope so bad!!! I've been drooling over it for a long time now, and would love to have it as my first telescope. Unfortunately I'm finding it being hard to pull the trigger on something rather expensive for me. I'm one who finds it hard to justify spending money on non-necessities especially in the Times we find ourselves. Hopefully with fingers crossed I can one day catch it on sale or something, because I love astronomy so much and want to personally see the images I dream about!
Hope you got to save up a bit for it
Thank you for a wonderful video. I've been looking for my own Christmas present this year, I think I've just found one. I have 23 years old EQ telescope 150x750, it works great in observing Saturn. I just want to have a new telescope, and besides, I want to get my own Christmas present this year. Thanks again!
Do they have Black Friday sale ?
The review was great though the presentation was distracting ... Tegan's head and hand movements seem exaggerated and unnecessarily intense. Nevertheless, I am going to give this telescope some serious consideration.
I just got this scope. Also looking to pick up more eyepieces. I want one for planet viewing and one for deep space viewing. Any recommendations, willing to go for the higer price ones made televue etc.
Our team recommends the 5MM Televue Delite for planets and the Televue 12mm Delos for many of the small to mid-sized deep sky targets
Can you attach a laser to the finder scope? Any recommendations?
Great question! You could attach a laser with adhesive velcro, or you can replace the finder with a laser finder all together www.highpointscientific.com/adm-accessories-532-green-laser-pointer-and-accessories-lzr-532kit
Hi. I wanted to know if you had thoughts on the 8” goto Dobsonian S11800. Thanks.
Hi there, do you know how much it weighs? (In Kg)
I wanna know if i can move it
Is it designed for a camera to connect to the focuser? Can the prime focus reach the sensor? Thanks.
Great question! You would need to use a Barlow with t-adapter, as well as a camera-specific M42 t-ring, in order to achieve focus with a DSLR. The Celestron Universal T Adapter & 2X Barlow Lens Assembly or the Apertura 2X Barlow Lens with T2 Threads - 1.25" could be used to make the connection.
@@highpointscientific Thank you.
He said twice that this is a diffraction limited telescope. What does that mean?
It means that the resolution is only limited by diffraction. I presume this to mean that the resolution is not limited by shortcomings of the telescope itself. I've not seen this phrase used before so I suspect it is more about marketing.
@@lscaruffiit generally refers to optics that test as 1/4 wavefront error or better. It is not just marketing
What's the max magnification for this telescope including Barlow lens?
Great question! The highest usable power for a well tuned 8" Newtonian like the Apertura AD8 is roughly 400x (50x per inch of aperture), but only under excellent conditions on bright high contrast targets like the moon and bright double stars. If you're using a 2x barlow then that would equate to a 6mm eyepiece.
Nice telescope. Would love to take it with us camping. Any way to capture images with a camera? We have a canon dslr, but also have iPhones.
you can buy smart phone adaptors that hold a phone in place that work ok. google it
I don't have this model but theoretically, every telescope acts like the lens of a camera. So you can just get an adapter to connect your Canon onto the eyepiece of the telescope. Then you would have use manual mode on your camera body and focus in what you want to take a picture of. I would start with the moon.
You can also get an adapter for a smartphone but this doesn't work nearly as well as a camera body adapter. The adapter I bought for my Nikon cost me $18 I believe so they're not expensive. Good luck!
@ChrisJohnson-yw2ky you would generally use a dslr without an eyepiece at prime focus but there are eyepiece projection adapters that hold smaller plossl size eyepieces, as well as some eyepieces having threads that can be adapted to t rings like the hyperion and some zoom eyepieces reveal t threads when you take the eyecup off.
As well as universal cell phone adapters that attach to most eyepieces.
But without tracking you are limited to the moon and.bigger planets like jupiter and saturn, and sometimes mars when it is at its closest approach
Can this be linked to my laptop?
Just ordered this exact model!
This scope is amazing. If your 9n the fence
Don't be.. Buy this I love mine
Is Apatura based on Omegon? Reason I am asking I originally came to this site when saw review on TH-cam for Omegon telescopes and very impressed.
Omegon is just the European company that is selling the same GSO scopes. Apertura came first.
Yes they are basically the same scope. GSO has been selling scopes with other company names on them for decades. The first post usa/discovery made celestron stathoppers were made by GSO before they switched to synta, as well as orion before they also switched to synta. Prior to 2005 in the USA, Hardin sold GSO scopes with the Deep Space hunter dobs, star-hoc eq mounted reflectors and refractors and the Terra hoc az mounted refractors. And after hardin, DBA Deep space observer and zhumell was the option, later followed by Apertura and TPO (opt house brand). I believe Apertura was high point's house brand, and astrotech is astronomics' house brand but I'm not sure if they had dobs, they mainly focused on WO style refractors at first
I just got the ad8 and I can't get the focuser to work. Anyone run into this issue.
Yes there are set screws that need to be adjusted and that can be tricky at first
How much of an upgrade would the AD10 be?
The AD8 would be a noticeable difference in terms of views but we wouldnt consider a "wow factor" type of increase if you had them side by side. That being said, starting with a 10" would, absolutely, provide you with more light gathering power thus acess to dimmer deep sky objects. The difference is nice. The AD12 would show a very noticeable difference from the AD! The difference between the 10 and 12 would be smaller than the difference between the 10 and the 8 meaning you would notice the increase in aperture going from the ad8 to the ad10 than you would going from the ad10 to the ad12. Some recommend starting with the 8" and when you are ready to upgrade, the ad12 is waiting for you! If you want a good middle spot, the 10" is great and really is a deep sky object hunter.
Hope this helps!
@@highpointscientificthanks for the reply! Just got the 8 in the mail and going through all the videos I’ve already watched
@@highpointscientificone example of where a 10 is much better is viewing globular clusters from light polluted areas. In darker skies they are more closely matched since dark skies are aperture equalizers.
Though other.than the benefits of f6 vs f5, I generally prefer a 10. Almost 20 years ago, a DBA DSO (a gso option at that time) 10" dob was a huge upgrade/addition to my hardin 8"f4 (also a GSO, the last of the rack and pinion era), but that f4 limited to lower power visual use and I mainly bought it for imaging as well as visual, being my first scope larger than 5".
I sold all of my reflectors, hardin 6"f5, 6" f8 dob (regret that), 8"f4 and DBA 10" dob after getting great samples of a deforked 8" LX200R, and a C11/G11, as well as televue 101 and pronto, and a stellarvue m3 for "easy as dob" visual use with tv101, c4r and 8"lx200R. I had all of my possessions stolen out of storage back in 2018.when I was going through a rough time, kicked when down.
I started back up in 2020 with a $100 used orion XT8, followed by an old 10" lx6 (premiere f10, I wouldn't have wanted an f6.3), that i got in trade for the losmandy tripod, weights and piggyback rings the tweakers didnt know enough to take), and not long after, an older GSO R+P starhopper 10 (needs a recoat but still puts up a decent but.dimmer than usual image) for $60, which obviously got more use than that meade monstrosity with its attached fork mount and that super wedge/field tripod monstrosity (the c11/g11 was much easier to deal with).
As well as another $100 find in an xt6, with a usable but plastic focuser (my DSH6 had a metal focuser, and was $99 NEW during the hardin fire sale). I was going to sell the xt8, and lent it out to the prospective buyer, but she couldn't lift it and I ended up picking it back up and lent my lightbridge 114 as a temporary scope while I worked on fixing up an older vixen 60mm f15 refractor which was better for her and her location, roof access in downtown LA, solar system objects only, and she was half japanese and dug japanese made stuff.
At that point I fell in love with the 8 again and decided to keep it, maybe because the mirror didn't need be be recoated, but it was also liftable as one piece (spring system allows this, no chance of tube coming off the base)- where the 10, not so much.
Basically I could see reason for having both the 8 and the 10, and even the 6 for the trifecta. But Alas 2021 was also a really bad year for me, losing my van to a.corrupt city and county, who stole-pounded it and conspired with another county to make sure I would be unable to get it out before it was auctioned. Why?
Because they saw it was loaded with telescopes, music instruments and amps. And that included my xt8, the 60mm vixen, a 127 mak, an ancient cg5, a nexstar GT, and a 102 f6.5 achromat, and a small case of plossls, barlow, filters and some orion flat fields and surely other stuff I am not remembering. And to add insult to injury, I was denied return of my 114 tabletop dob, but since I was planning on using it on the GT as a wide field scope, as well as goto assist (with green laser, or just match where the.red dot was pointed) for my 10" or 8" (dob or classic C8 which a friend gave me an offer I couldn't refuse to replace my old 8"), it wasn't a huge loss since I didn't have the mount anymore, and got the scope for only $40 anyway. It did have excellent optics despite the secondary being glued to the stalk slightly askew. Synta made, same optics as starblast.
But the biggest loss was the van, so I can't even haul big scopes.anymore if I wanted to. Though the stuff inside would have added up to more than the van was worth as well, the scopes may have been on the low end, but the music gear wasnt.
At least my main cases of eyepieces, my main eq mount with motor drives, an astroview with upgraded tripod options (the original aluminum one was with the cg5 in van), weren't in the van, but all but my 4lb counterweights were, so my 102mm f10 can't be used until I get at least a 7lb weight. So for now it is just an ST80 and an etx90 tube that can be used on my main mount, and I would prefer to use my 102 f10, especially to take to outreach events. That or the c8, but my power tank was also in the van.