Orion Telescopes & Binoculars

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$Orion ED120 apo refractor on Orion's Sirius EQ-G "GoTo" and GPS equipped German equatorial mount with portable 12 volt power supply$

Orion ED120 apo refractor on Orion's Sirius EQ-G "GoTo" and GPS equipped German equatorial mount with portable 12 volt power supply

For the unrelated British telescope manufacturer, go to Orion Optics

Orion Telescopes & Binoculars is an American-based retailer of telescopes and other equipment for astronomy that also sells some equipment for other areas of interest, such as birdwatching. It operates several retail stores in California as well as an online store and a semi-quarterly mail-order catalog. The company is a prominent advertiser in North American astronomy magazines such as Sky & Telescope and Astronomy.

[edit] History

Orion Telescopes & Binoculars was founded in 1975 by Tim Gieseler, who served as its only president and CEO. Since January, 2005, it has been owned by Imaginova, the U.S. conglomorate founded in 1999 by CNN business anchor Lou Dobbs. Between the mid-1990's and 2005, Orion only sold binoculars, telescopes and accessories under the "Orion" brand, but since the Imaginova acquisition, Orion has started to sell non-Orion brand products as well, including Tele Vue eyepieces, Celestron 8 and 11-inch (280 mm) Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes.

In late 2005, Imaginova and Celestron, the latter fresh out of an out-of-court settlement with rival Meade over "GoTo" telescope technology[1], announced an agreement that would allow Celestron 8, 9.25, and 11-inch (280 mm) Schmidt-Cassegrain optical tube assemblies (OTA), painted in metallic gray and using the "Orion" brand (Celestron OTAs are painted either gloss black or semi-gloss matte orange), to be sold with Orion German equatorial mounts and eyepiece accessories.

[edit] Products

Orion sells a range of telescopes that they characterized as "beginner", "intermediate" or "advanced", including Newtonians, Maksutovs, Schmidt-Cassegrains and refractors with or without (sold as optical tube assemblies or "OTA") a variety of mounts. Orion also sells a series of Dobsonian telescopes that come in a "Classic" and "IntelliScope" versions, the latter has upgraded accessories and the ability to indicate astronomical objects to the observer aided by a computerized object database.

At the high performance end of their range, Orion has a series of two element apochromatic (apo) refractors manufactured in China featuring "extra low dispersion" fluorite crown glass in one element of the objective lens. These are marketed as the ED80 (80 mm or 3-inch (76 mm) objective at f/7.5), ED100 (100mm or 4-inch (100 mm) at f/9) and ED120 (120mm or 4.7-inch (120 mm) at f/7.5).

Orion also sells binoculars for astronomical and terrestrial observing, microscopes and monocular spotting scopes of the type used by birdwatchers and marksmen.

There are also accessories for all of these devices offered, eyepieces, various telescope mounts and tripods, finder scopes, observing furniture, star charts, flashlights, power supplies, computer software, GPS units, etc.