Yes, our inventory is accurate!
Qualifies for Free Ground Economy Shipping (CONUS Only)
You know it; you love it. You've dreamt about it; you've drooled over it. Now one can finally be yours. We just came into possession of a 1964 standard model Questar in good condition. The meniscus is mostly clean, but not perfect. There is some interior dust and a few marks.
It comes in the original leather case, with screw-in tripod legs, threaded 40-80 and 80-160 eyepieces, both in very good shape, and a partial-aperture (offset) glass solar filter that is in excellent shape - no pinholes that would be dangerous to your eyes when using it.
This unit is missing a couple items: The drive is the original 120v type, but we do not have the power cord. This should be purchasable from Questar. The screw-in dust cap is also missing from this unit. A replacement should be purchasable from Questar.
Questar Serial #4-1998
The Questar Standard
The Questar Standard 3.5 has long been regarded as the finest personal telescope in the world. In addition to the telescope’s legendary resolution, flatness of field and contrast, the Standard has integrated features that are unavailable with other telescopes. The control box has two (2) viewing ports with flick knob selection. It provides three power changes per eyepiece, an internal finder and two telescopic powers. Included also are a star-diagonal prism, solar filter for finder lens, off-axis glass solar filter, and focusable eyepiece diopter. The barrel rotates for viewing height adjustment and is silk-screened with a functional Moon map. The removable dewcap is a Star Chart.
The mount is brushed cast aluminum, aircraft polyurethane painted, with friction drive alt-azimuth controls. It includes an AC powered synchronous clock drive motor and declination clamp. The setting circle for Right Ascension and Declination is fully functional. The RA circle is universal for northern and southern hemispheres. The Standard stores in a carrying case that has pockets for the included tabletop legs, extra eyepiece, solar Filter and AC adapter cord, as well as a pocket for the optional Powerguide Controller.
The American made Questar telescopes have for more than seventy years conveyed awe by means of their innovation and state of the art precision construction. Imitated but still not yet equaled, these are the finest Catadioptric (mirror-lens) telescopes in production. They have been highly evolved to take advantage of technology improvements over the decades, yet without compromising those attributes that make them uniquely attractive to their owners.
These “Catadioptric” telescopes are based on the Maksutov-Cassegrain design that incorporates both refractive and reflecting components: two mirrors and a corrector lens (the glass plate at the front) gather and reflect light to focus at a point at the rear of the telescope. The Questar optical system provides apochromatic image clarity and contrast that is matched or surpassed only by the very best 3-½ to 4 inch aperture Apochromat refracting telescopes, and yet a Questar optical tube is only ¼ or less their length - and we know of no Apo telescope with mount, no matter how well made, that is as easy and quick to use or as compact to travel with. There is a real grin factor that takes hold of you when you look through a Questar and are startled at the clarity and three-dimensional nature of the views are, even more amazing is how these views come out of such a small and handy to use telescope.
The astronomical and conventional field models telescopes incorporate features that have made the Questar a most “user friendly” system, a term attributed to the Questar since the days of slide rules. The industrial quality of construction guarantees a lifetime of good service even under adverse conditions, each is hand assembled to a high standard of excellence. Another aspect that sets the Questar apart from the rest, especially in the age of our disposable-oriented society, is that lifetime is no exaggeration since we still provide factory parts and service support for Questar telescopes made since 1954!
Questar has been immortalized in books, film, and other media by respected people many who gave back something to astronomy including Johnny Carson a national television icon, and Renaissance man Arthur C. Clarke who wrote "the finest small telescope ever built--the 3-½ inch Questar, a jewel of precision optics which has produced close-ups of the moon that could easily be mistaken for Mount Wilson photographs". Among three Standard Questar telescopes made for the US Army Redstone Arsenal in 1959 was one completed in May that was used by Dr. Wernher Von Braun; it remains in service with the Kennedy Space Center amateur astronomy club. The Questar is considered such an accomplishment that one Questar Standard 3-½ resides in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Technology in Washington, D.C.; it is a unique cut-away instrument that reveals the various innovations unique to the Questar.