The company was founded by Mr. Roland Christen, and has been developing telescopes and accessories for the advanced amateur since 1975. The Starfire line was officially introduced in 1987, but optical tubes of various sizes and focal lengths with the same technology were made in years previous to this. These refractors contained apochromatic doublet objectives from 4" to 7". The tubes were well baffled against off-axis light and included a 2" focuser. Oversize focusers were available as an option. Focal lengths varied from f/6 to f/9 except on the "Super Planetary" series which extended focal lengths up to f/12. The optical tubes were available on several mounts, including the Super Nova, a light GEM similar to the Polaris mount. The #706 The #800 was a heavy duty mount capable of handling the heavier tubes. It was available on either a heavy metal tripod or pier, and included a polar axis scope and a worm gear 12v. DC dual axis drive.
|
In 1992 the Super EDT series of refractors was introduced. The triplet objective of these telescopes used an extra-low dispersion glass element between two crown glasses rather than a flourite lens as others had done. These optical tubes had oversized focusers for either 2" or 1 ¼" accessories and a built-in dew cap. These were offered as optical tubes only, but could be mounted on Astro-Physics 600E, 700E 800E or 900 pedestal GEM mounts. The mounts, as previously noted, were very heavy duty mounts with Polar axis finders and highly accurate worm gear DC drives. The models included: 105 Traveler EDT - 4" f/6 130 Starfire EDT - 5" f/8 155 Starfire EDT - 6" f/9 180 Starfire EDT - 7" f/9 |
|
| 155 Starfire EDT | ||
| Later in 1992 two telescopes with doublet objectives were produced which incorporated the same Super ED glass. These were basically the same optical tubes as previously produced with the doublet objective lens. They included: Star 130 - 5" f/8 Star 155 - 6" f/9 |
||
 |
 |
|
| Traveller EDF | 130 Starfire EDF | |
| In 1996 the EDT line received a new incarnation of the objective and the new designation EDF. A partial listing includes: 105 Traveler EDF - 4" f/6 130 Starfire EDF - 5" f/6 155 Starfire EDF - 6" f/7 |
||