Orion 10016 StarBlast 6 Astro Reflector Telescope

Amazing for begginers. Easy to transport. Simple and quick assembly. Wonderfull Moon and planets images (for 6” aperture).

Very pleased with the performance of this telescope. The rotating tube makes for fairly comfortable viewing while seated on a small chair. I have to move this telescope up some stairs to use it on my roof terrace. Carrying the tube and mount separately makes this a very easy option. The only thing missing is an azimuth ring. I had to make my own. In combination with a Wixey digital level this made it very easy to find a lot of objects, especially when their altitude made the 8x50 difficult to look through for more than a few seconds. I swapped the red dot finder for an 8x50 GSO model.

Very pleased with this telescope - It's easy for me and the children to use, gives crystal clear view of the moon with really good detail. This product could do with a recommended tripod to go with it as the supplied stand is only designed to go on the floor. Very easy to swap lenses and view finder, once calibrated works a treat. You do have to have a steady hand as when viewing low orbit objects the telescope does tend to drop and tightening the bolt doesn't really fix this.All in all, for beginners, it's great!

Very good telescope very fast delivery thanks

Telescope was received on time with all extra components. Unfortunately the EZ finder 2 wasn't working when we started to use the telescope. I thought it was a battery issue but it wasn't the case. The front of the finder seemed to be slightly dented as well which made me thought it had already Been used in the past.I expect replacement from the seller and will get in touch with them asap.Telescope and lenses look good but it is still too early to give an objective review.

Love my telescope. Well worth the money I paid.

Para iniciacion es perfecto, viene bien embalado y perfectamente colimado, su buscador es comodo una vez centrado con el telescopio, preciso en su montura una vez equilibrado, facil de transportar, con mas oculares y lente barlow sacas todo su potencial, este limitado por sus caracteristicas de apertura y distancia focal, no aparece coma al ser f5, la luz que capta es suficiente para buenas vistas de algunas nebulosas, galaxias y cumulos, en planetas se queda un poco pequeño.... por este precio es muy buen telescopio un defecto que tiene seria su enfocador que su ajuste es poco fino pero en calidad precio total no puedo darle menos estrellas, sencillamente lo recomiendo

Es un excelente telescopio, Orion presenta muy buenos productos en este ramo, este en particular es muy fácil de utilizar y la calidad del producto es muy buena, se recomienda ampliamente y se aconseja comprar también su Case for StarBlast 6 para cuando quieras transportarlo a algún otro lugar.

This telescope is great for Beginners and Intermediate amateur astronomers. It's six inches of aperture can give you quite bright views of solar system objects and modest views of deep-sky objects. But as anything within life, it is not perfect.Cons (But personally, I can live with):- Although not very heavy (around 24 pounds) it is a bit awkward to grab.- You need a 2mm Hex (Allen) key to rotate and tilt the secondary mirror, but none is provided in the package.- This is a fast F/5 telescope, so a careful and constant collimation is a MUST if you want sharp images.- It is short even pointing upwards (around 80-90 cm), so you need to place it on a table, or crawl around the floor.- The base is a simple alt-az mount, so pointing to objects near the azimuth is tricky.- Its short focal lenght makes that achieving higher magnifications (more than 75x) requires more equipment.But personally, I think that its good things weight more than the bad ones.Pros:- It has a parabollic mirror, so it does not suffer from spherical aberrations. And obviusly (but if you are new to this, you may not know) as it is a Reflector, it neither suffers from chromatic aberrations as Refractos do!- The base bearings are soft and provide little inertia for small adjustments, but is sturdy enough to not move when you are watching at the eyepiece.- As a fast F/5 telescope, it provides wide fields of view (at the expense of magnification, of course).- The primary mirror is marked at its center, so collimation is easy.- The included red dot finder makes it easy to point to stars and planets.- It includes two decent Plossl eyepieces with focal lenghts of 25mm and 10. They provide 30x and 75x magnifications respectively. Acording to Orion, they both have an apparent field of view of 50 degrees, so that gives them 1.66 degrees of true field of view for the 25mm eyepiece (around three full moons in width) and 0.66 degrees of true field of view for the 10mm eyepiece (a bit more than a full moon in width). It is WIDE!- As it is short, it is easy to store and carry around in a car's trunk.- Comparing its price to a Reflector or a Catadioptric telescope of equivalent aperture, this one costs as less than a half! And you won't find a F/5 Catadioptric anyway.As others have noted, assembly is easy and just requires a small adjustment in collimation. I was able to watch the conjunction between Venus and Mercury at Jan 10, 2015 and it fitted nicely in the 25mm eyepiece, simply beautiful! The Pleiades look a bit crowded on the 25mm eyepiece for my taste, I prefer a 32mm one (23.4x magnification, 2.1 degrees of true FOV) for viewing them, and they look great. The Double Cluster in Perseus looks gorgeous in the 25mm eyepiece. The Moon looks nice in both the 25mm and 10mm eyepieces; its craters look sharp and very detailed but with this aperture you may need a moon filter or there will be too much glare in your eye; I use a 13% transition one. The Orion Nebula looks like a glowing cloud with both eyepieces (I prefer the wider view of the 25mm one). The Trapezium Cluster at the Nebula's center is resolved only in the 10mm eyepiece. Unfortunately I live in a Red light pollution Zone, so I may not have great views of nebulas but nevertheless Orion's Nebula looks great! More detail is shown if you have a broadband filter. You may see "cloudyness" in the nebula with the filter, not just a "glow". It is beautyful! Everyone who I have shown it has loved it! Open clusters in general look like packs of diamonds, very detailed and with six inches of aperture, you should be able to detect even 11 magnitude stars fairly easy, so clusters look rich in stars.On middle Jan 2015, comet Lovejoy Q2 achieved maximun brightness, around 3.8 magnitude. It was hard to find, as every nigth it moved across the stars and it's not visible to the naked eye in a polluted sky, but it was obvius when you find it though the telescope, it looked like a round smudge, quite bright but no trail was visible from my home. On a dark sky it might have been visible.For planetary detail you need a Barlow lens or shorter focal lenght eyepieces. With the 25mm eyepiece, Jupiter appears round in shape and not star-like and you notice its moons if they are around 5-10 arcseconds away from the planet's disk; no detail is visible in Juputer's atmosphere. With the 10mm eyepiece, Jupiter now seems a ball and you are able to distinct (quite hardly) it's equatorial zone (white band at the center) and it's two equatorial belts (brown bands around the equatorial zone), no more detail is visible beyond the belts, it just looks white. Its moons are visible if they are not in front of or behind the planet's disk. No moon shadows are distinctable at this zoom level (When they pass in front of the planet, they cast they shadow on it). This is unfortunate because we are using 75x magnifications at these levels and that's as much as this telescope provides with the included accesories; but I prefer a telescope that can provide a wider field of view rather than high magnifications (you cannot have both!) because you can always buy a Barlow lens or buy shorter focal lenght eyepieces and get higher magnifications, but with a telescope that provides you higher magnifications it is harder to improve the field of view without generating vignetting or spherical aberrations or expensive eyepieces. The Pleiades for example, look awful in high magnifications. Now with a 2x Barlow lens and the 10mm eyepiece you get 150x magnifications. At this level Jupiter looks big enough that you can see the equatorial zone and belts, the temperate zones and belts and if the air is steady, you may see some detail in its polar region. You can see the moons shadow transits (In fact, I was able to see the triple shadow transit on Jan 23, 2015, really nice!) and you may able to see moon transits also (the moon passing in front of the planet, I've seen Callisto transit in front of Jupiter!) and even better, you can see the great red spot when it transits! Simply, AMAZING!In the end, this scope has provided me with lots of hours of fun and learning. I love it and I don't regret buying it. And just imagine what kind of impressive views you may get from a true dark sky!

This is my 1st telescope.Couldn’t justify an 8” scope right off the bat, so I decided on a 6”.Portability was important as well!It is a decent size for the backyard or to take in the car out to the countryside or darker sky areas.Shipped on time in a double box. Easy to set up.Great helpful videos on Orion’s YouTube channel.Collimation was great right out of the box!Like the dob base and will upgrade later on to computerized “push to” tracking with the IntelliScope Upgrade KitBought a 2X Barlow lens.Glad I purchased this model!Looking forward to the dark skies!

I've only used my Orion Star Blaster (my nickname!) a few times and the detail of the moon here in the Southwest (Full) is incredible! I can see details of craters and other landmarks.Assembly was a snap but the EZ Finder II spotting scope (pre-installed) was installed backwards and I didn't notice it until I had Orion on the phone. I was surprised when I told first a call taker, then a support person, the problem I was having and neither acted like they had seen the problem before or knew how to fix it.The problem was lining up the EZ Finder II spotting scope with the telescope. I could not lower the view on the spotting scope enough, the I looked at the mount and saw it was installed backwards. I hung up from tech support, reversed the scope, and it lined up immediately. Lining up the EZ Finder II was EXCELLENT!Because the EZ Finder II was installed backwards, I check all hardware and found no other problems.I was actually not very excited about the 'table top' part of the scope but it has turned out to be excellent. Putting it atop any stable surface brings it right up to eye level. Adjusting the scope forward, backward, rotation, etc., is easy.My Star Blaster fits in my Nissan Pathfinder's back area perfectly standing up as I'm sure most 'tall' SUV's and Crossovers would be the same way.The phone adapter works well, once you figure out how to line it up, the rest is easy.Would buy again!Rick C.Las Vegas, NV.