The Asian Fantastic |

Today, the Celestron company is one of the most well-known and respected companies which makes telescopes. The company has a very interesting history which starts when a man named Tom Johnson wanted to find a telescope for his two sons who were young at the time. He couldn’t find any acceptable starter telescopes so Johnson decided to make one from scratch instead. The first “Celestron” telescope was a six-inch reflector. Johnson discovered that he had a passion for building telescopes and began to make increasingly larger and more advanced telescopes. Soon, what started out as a hobby turned into a business venture.

The innovation which really put Celestron telescopes on the map was when the company was challenged to make a production-efficient Schmidt corrector plate. These plates are used in high end telescopes but are hard to make for general use because of their unique surface which is a bit wavelike. The team at Celestron found out how to mass produce the plates and by the 1970s these high end telescopes were available to amateur astronomers at a reasonable price. Johnson held onto the Celestron company until 1980 and then it had a few different users. Through the years, Celestron has lived up to its initial mission of making great starter telescopes. While Celestron also does make many professional level telescopes, amateurs love that they can get a good quality telescope from Celestron for a very reasonable price.