Features:

  • A fun, capable, and simple point-and-view tabletop reflector telescope popular among both beginners and seasoned astronomers thanks to its ease of use and versatile performance
  • Substantial 6" aperture reflector optics reveal good detail on the planets and Moon, as well as bright deep-sky objects such as nebulas, galaxies, and star clusters
  • Compact tabletop design gives the StarBlast 6 reflector great grab-and-go portability - weighs just 23.5 lbs.
  • The sturdy StarBlast 6 reflector base arrives pre-assembled in the box for hassle-free set-up. No GPS included
  • Includes 25mm and 10mm Sirius Plossl 1.25" telescope eyepieces, EZ Finder II aiming device, eyepiece rack, Starry Night software, and more!.Highest Useful Magnification:300x
Great Starter Telescope

My 15-year-old son loves this Telescope. He uses it almost every day. It's been a great investment.

This telescope is AWESOME!

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.

Perfect "little" scope. (should only be moved by an adult when fully assembled due to weight)

Perfect "little" scope. I was debating giving this as a gift to a teenage girl at Christmas. Unfortunately, this scope can only be carried in one piece by a strong adult. As an adult I can grab one of the built-in handle holes in each hand and walk this outside at the drop of a hat. I have been using it on a regular basis for short 5-15minute sessions. I would never be do that with a more complicated scope+tripod combination. (my old 10" Schmidt–Cassegrain would take too long to set up.) Set for the StarBlaster 6 (not the 6i) is a breeze. The base is already assembled. You only have to attach the rings that hold the optical tube to the base and then slide the scope into them. The finder was simple to slide into place in the already mounted holder. (scope came with a bunch of parts, bearings, etc for conversion to a 6i that I am Very happy I didn't need.) For accessories I bought a nice eyepiece that I'm using 95% of the time. A 32mm Orion Sirius Plossl Telescope Eyepiece Orion 8728 32mm Sirius Plossl Telescope Eyepiece I have other eyepieces but for a scope this size a nice wide-field eyepiece is perfect.

Great telescope

First of all I was very weary of the condition this telescope could be delivered in. It's a delicate precision instrument that wont do well with rough handling. To my surprise it was packaged very well and had no signs of damage. Phew.....that's a good thing. I haven't used it a whole lot yet but so far nothing but good times and great visuals. I got to see Jupiter and its moons with great clarity although I did buy an eyepiece set that was an extra $170. It was well worth the extra money spent. Out of the box with no extras it was still a fun experience and I could still see Jupiter with good quality. I could even see the birds on a tree with amazing clarity that was at least 3 miles away. I thought this scope wasnt good for earth bound visuals. I'm not complaining it was a treat. I'm going to upgrade to the intelliscope in just a few days so I will update this review in a timely manner.

Very happy so far

So far so good. 1st day I was able to take picture (with my iphone camera) of the moon using 13% filter. This is my first telescope. I did a lot of research and end up buying this one because mobility and good aberture. I believe I will need better lenses going fwd, specially the 10mm or less range. I recomend Sky Guide app for help finding stuff in the sky (2.99) amazing.

Orion Starblast 6 Astro

Just absolutely amazing! This will have you lost in space! The moon, Venus, and Jupiter will take your breath away I have yet to see Saturn but ill catch it one of these days!

Great scope with beautiful images. Have realistic expectations and you will not be disappointed.

Had this telescope for 3 years now and it has performed beautifully. Other reviews have covered everything about the scope so I'll just post some planet pics to show you the image quality (Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Moon). I used a Gosky 6mm Plossl eye piece. My camera was an old Fujifilm F20 Finepix which I simply held up to the eyepiece with the macro lens setting. These were taken in 2016 when most of the planets were at their closest range so it was about as good of a setting as I could get. Maybe with a proper camera attached to the telescope you can do slightly better. When I say be realistic, don't expect to see something like Andromeda as more than a small, white smudge or the Orion Nebula as more than a little cloudy, colorless area (although you can see the trapezoid star formation) However many of the Messier objects can be located and identified which was extremely fun. But honestly nothing will trump viewing the planets for me and this scope does an excellent job even with its compact size. I hope to spot Uranus with its greenish-blue tint in the back half of 2019. It functions very well as a grab and go telescope. Anything heavier and with a longer focal length will be difficult to transport. To me this is about the max size/quality/bang for your buck if you want to be able to take it with you and enjoy good views of the sky.

Love it!

Really beautiful telescope - and HUGE! A lot bigger than I thought it would be, but that's ok. It was purchased for my 16-year-old son for Christmas as his first telescope and I think it is going to be an outstanding introduction into stargazing for him. It's size makes it a challenge to move around (we don't have a window he can set it up at, so he needs to keep taking it outside when he wants to use it), but he is not daunted by that. The packaging was outstanding - there was one large damaged area and a couple smaller ones I image done to it during shipping, so I was concernd what we would find when setting it up on Christmas morning. But the telescope was so well packed and protected, there was not a scratch on it and it works perfectly!

Great scope.

Great scope, delivered fast, packaging was great, instructions were clear, it took me about 20 minuets to put it together. I upgraded it with a goto mount and a motorized focuser as well as a set of plossl eye pieces and very happy with the performance of the scope.

A great Short Tube Newtonian!

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!

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