Brand
Celestron is the manufacturer most closely identified with the Schmidt-Cassegrain, and its orange tubes have been a fixture of amateur astronomy for decades. The current range spans complete beginner GoTo packages, aplanatic imaging Cassegrains, and the RASA astrographs — a set of products that share very little beyond the corrector plate at the front. We are not affiliated with Celestron and this page is not endorsed by them.
Go2Telescope is independent. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored byCelestron, and this page is our own assessment.
Celestron’s core competence is folding long focal lengths into short tubes and selling them as usable systems. The 200 mm Schmidt-Cassegrain in particular is one of the most versatile instruments in amateur astronomy: enough aperture for serious visual work, enough focal length for excellent planetary imaging, and small enough to carry.
The EdgeHD variants extend that to imaging by adding field correction inside the baffle tube, which turns a design with visibly elongated corner stars into one with a genuinely flat field.
Assuming a NexStar package is an astrophotography platform. It is not, out of the box — the alt-azimuth fork rotates the field and caps deep-sky exposures at tens of seconds. It is an excellent visual and planetary imaging system, and it becomes a deep-sky imaging system only after a wedge, an alignment routine and a substantial loss of portability.
The second common error is underestimating cooldown. A closed 200 mm tube brought outside from a warm house produces internal currents for the better part of an hour.
We have no relationship with Celestron. Where we link to a retailer we may earn a commission, which does not affect what appears here — several Celestron products on this site carry limitations prominently enough that they will cost us clicks.
Schmidt-CassegrainOTA only
A superb long-focal-length instrument that will expose every weakness in your mount, your seeing and your guiding before it shows you what it can do.
Schmidt-Cassegrain
The most portable telescope here that is still a serious instrument, and the easiest complete package to actually get outside on a weeknight.
Schmidt-Cassegrain
The most capable complete package here for planets and small deep-sky objects, on a mount that is at its honest limit carrying it.
Rowe-Ackermann Schmidt AstrographCamera onlyOTA only
The fastest way to collect deep-sky photons at this aperture, sold to people who must accept that there is no eyepiece and never will be.