Apertura CarbonStar 150 Review - The Best Beginner Newtonian Reflector Telescope
The Apertura CarbonStar 150 is a small and light reflector telescope with an aperture of 150mm, a focal length of 600mm, and a focal ratio of f/4.
The speed of the telescope can be even further improved by using the Apertura Photographic Reducing Coma Corrector (PRCC), which will turn the CarbonStar 150 from f/4 to f/3.8.
In this post, we’ll put this beginner reflector telescope to the test from both the desert, and our Bortle 9 city backyard. We’ll use our cooled cropped sensor camera and see how the telescope performs on galaxies and nebulae.
Tables of Contents
Introduction
What's in the Box?
Imaging the Tulip Nebula from the city
Apertura CarbonStar 150 Specs & Price
Imaging the Whirlpool Galaxy with the Apertura 150
The Best Beginner Newtonian Telescope?
Final Thoughts
Apertura CarbonStar 150 - What's in the Box?
The Apertura CarbonStar 150 telescope comes with everything you need to start imaging. Below is an overview of what came in the box:
The box includes:
The Apertura CarbonStar 150mm Imaging Newtonian OTA
Telescope Rings
Losmandy-D Style Dovetail Bar
Vixen Style Dovetail Bar
Synta Style Finder/ Guide Scope Shoe
2" to 1.25" Eyepiece Adapter
Dust Cap
3D Printed Primary Cell Cover
5mm and 2.5mm Hex Keys
Some additional accessories we suggest getting for your CarbonStar would be a Bahtinov mask and/or an electronic focuser.
Imaging the Tulip Nebula from the City
Before we go into the specifications of the telescope, let's go over a couple of targets we imaged with this telescope. Below you will see our picture of the Tulip Nebula, or Sh2-101.
We imaged this region of the sky from our backyard in the city, and spent a total of four nights on it. We used our ZWO ASI2600MC-Duo for this with an Askar Duoband filter, which blocks all wavelengths of light except for Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen III.
The Tulip Nebula fits very nicely in the field of view of the Apertura CarbonStar 150 and this camera, with some also a lot of surrounding gas visible in the frame.
Check out the full picture below! We go over details in our video, but this end result looks great, with beautiful colors, stars with tight diffraction spikes, and lots of details.
Sh2-101 in narrowband
Want to process your images following our own workflow? Get our guide HERE!
GEAR USED:
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC-Duo
Telescope: Apertura CarbonStar 150
Mount: ZWO AM5
Accessories: ASIAir
Power: Apertura Lithium Battery
Processing: Pixinsight, with RC-Astro plugins
ACQUISITION DETAILS:
Total Exposure Time: 26 hours
Exposure Time per frame: 10 minutes
Filters: Askar 6nm Color Magic H+O Filter
Gain: 26
Apertura CarbonStar 150 Specs & Price
The Apertura CarbonStar 150 is a Newtonian reflector telescope that weighs a little over 7 pounds (tube only) and is 48.74cm long in length. It has an aperture of 150mm (6") and a focal length of 600mm. Being a Newt, it has a fast focal ratio of f/4, which can be improved even further by adding the coma corrector, making is f/3.8. Several nice features have been built into this telescope in the goal of making it the best possible beginner reflector telescope available. We'll cover these later in this post.
General Specs
Aperture: 150mm (6")
Focal Length: 600mm
Focal Ratio: f/4
Design: Newtonian Reflector
Tube Length: 48.74cm (19 3/16")
Weight: 10.4 lbs (4.7 kg) without dovetail
The Apertura CarbonStar has a field illumination that is optimized for IMX294 and IMX533 sensors. It is perfect for 4/3" cameras, but it honestly is also close to perfect for cropped sensor cameras. We use the ASI2600MC which is a cropped sensor, and after one iteration of BlurXTerminator (which everyone uses, or should use, nowadays...) cannot see any flaw in our stars.
The backfocus on the telescope is 55mm, which is similar to the vast majority of other telescopes on the market. It has M48 mounting threads, and you can expect your camera to reach a somewhat good focus around the 20mm mark on the focuser.
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Pricing
The Apertura CarbonStar telescope is priced at $899, or $1,119 with the coma corrector, which is an excellent price for a beginner telescope built for astrophotography. There are also sales going on regularly. At the time of writing this review, the Apertura CarbonStar 150 with coma corrector is on sale for $999. We strongly recommend getting the package that includes the coma corrector!
Imaging the Whirlpool Galaxy with the Apertura CarbonStar 150
The second target we captured with this 6" reflector is M51, known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. This is one of the best beginner galaxies to photograph, and is located in the constellation Canes Venatici.
You can see the result below, taken from the desert (Bortle 4 spot), with 2 hours of total integration time. The galaxy looks very good, with nice crisp details and faint gas visible near M51b. The diffraction spikes are lovely and thin, and the overall image is impressive for a telescope under $1,000!
The Whirlpool Galaxy with the Apertura CarbonStar 150
GEAR USED:
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC-Duo
Telescope: Apertura 75
Mount: ZWO AM5
Accessories: ASIAir
Power: Apertura Lithium Battery
Processing: Pixinsight, with RC-Astro plugins
ACQUISITION DETAILS:
Total Exposure Time: 2 hours
Exposure Time per frame: 3 minutes
Filters: Askar 6nm Color Magic H+O Filter
Gain: 26
The Best Beginner Newtonian Telescope?
Specific improvements were made to the telescope in the hopes of making it the best reflector telescope possible for the price. Some of these improvements include:
Stray Light Control
Because unwanted light reflections is a real problem in many telescopes, Apertura built two things on the CarbonStar to protect it from unwanted light reaching the camera sensor.
The first one is baffles. Built inside the optical tube are 9 knife edge baffles, which will protect from light reflections much better than if the interior was completely smooth. Baffles are often seen in high end telescopes, but not in beginner friendly ones, so this is a great addition to this telescope.
The second one is a cap for the back cell. To truly ensure that no light gets through to your sensor, Apertura provides a black cap that can be attached to the back of the telescope. This is probably useless if you image from a dark site, but can be very useful if you do astrophotography from the backyard with lights coming from your neighbor's house or street lamps!
Carbon Fiber Tube
The material used for the optical tube is carbon fiber. This is a great choice to ensure the telescope is as light as possible, and make it even more beginner-friendly. Some of the main cons about starting astrophotography with a reflector is that they are "bulkier and heavier than refractors". The carbon fiber build ensures that the "heavy" issue is out of the window!
Included Dovetails
This might feel like a minor thing, but it is something we wanted to take note of as we love when companies do this: The Apertura CarbonStar comes with two dovetails, one Losmandy style dovetail and one Vixen style dovetail. You can attach the dovetail that your mount accepts to the bottom of the telescope, and use the other one on the top to later attach any accessory you might have! If your mount allows both sizes of dovetails, we suggest using the Losmandy-style dovetail for the base, and the Vixen one on top.
Focuser and Collimation
The focuser built into the Carbon Star is a strong linear bearing focuser. It uses a 100mm long rail supported by precision ball bearings that ride in a track. One thing we noticed when imaging both from the backyard and the desert is that the telescope holds focus very well despite temperature changes throughout the night! We didn't have to re-focus a single time each night which is incredible!
Same can be said about the collimation. I imaged for 4 nights in the backyard, and only collimated once on the very first evening. I carried the telescope in and out of the house each night and the collimation was still perfect. I had to re-collimate when I drove 1 hour away to the desert, which makes sense since I drove on a dirt road. But comparing to other beginner newtonian telescopes I've used in the past, this one holds collimation very well!
CarbonStar Telescope Review - Final Thoughts
What do we think about the Apertura CarbonStar 150 after trying it?
Some key points about the Apertura 75 telescope to summarize this review are:
It is the best beginner reflector telescope we can think of at this time
It is a Newtonian reflector, meaning you will need to collimate it and use a coma corrector
The Apertura CarbonStar 150 has a focal length of 600mm, a focal ratio of f/4, and an aperture of 150mm
It comes with two dovetail plates, Vixen and Losmandy style
It maintains focus and collimation very well compared to other beginner reflectors
The 6" CarbonStar is compact and portable enough to be a good telescope to take on the field
The base price is $899
We hope you found this Apertura CarbonStar 150 telescope review useful. If you would like to purchase this telescope, you can do so at High Point Scientific!
Do you already have this telescope? If so, feel free to attach some of your images in the comments section! We'd love to see what you were able to get with it, and it will also help others decide if this telescope is a good fit for them. Also, do not hesitate to ask us questions in the comments if we forgot to cover something important!
Our full review video about the Apertura CarbonStar 150
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