Celestron

Celestron CPC Deluxe 1100 HD

An 11-inch EdgeHD tube on a heavy fork GoTo mount, for the observer who wants a permanent-quality planetary and deep-sky instrument without building a pier.

87/ 100

Polaris Score

#1 of 6 large computerized SCT

See the breakdown ↓

Aperture

280mm

Focal Length

2800mm

Focal Ratio

f/10

Mount Type

Fork Alt-Azimuth GoTo

Optical Design

Schmidt-Cassegrain (EdgeHD)

Weight

29 kg

From$4,699

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Price tracked by PolarisObserved 49 timesTracking since Jul 2026

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Where to buy

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What it's built forOpen these in the simulator →

This telescope lives for the planets.

An f/10 focal length built to magnify. Where fast scopes sweep wide, this one holds a single planet rock-steady at high power — a telescope for the patient observer on a steady night.

Sweet spot 210–350×Loves steady seeing

The view people remember

Saturn, with its rings tilted wide.

The one you call people outside to see — the rings standing clear of the planet, the Cassini Division a clean black line drawn around them.

See Saturn through this telescope →

Where else it shines

Never gets old

The Moon

Extremely detailed surface — crater chains, rilles, and mountain shadows

Open view →

Also excellent on

Jupiter

Sharp planetary detail — multiple bands, festoons, and surface variation

Open view →

Within reach

Orion Nebula

Stronger structure — embedded stars plus dark lanes within the core

Open view →

Easy first target

The Pleiades

Densely packed showpiece — hundreds of stars across multiple magnitudes

Open view →

✦

Wide-field nebulae belong to another kind of telescope. This one trades width for reach.

01What it's good at

What it's best at — and the trade-offs.

Best at

✓280mm of aperture pulls in globular clusters, planetary nebulae and galaxy detail that smaller scopes only hint at

✓EdgeHD optics flatten the field edge to edge, so stars stay pinpoint across the whole eyepiece instead of smearing at the margins

✓The integrated fork GoTo with a database of 40,000+ objects points and tracks itself, which matters at f/10 where fields are narrow

✓SkyAlign gets you aligned on any three bright objects without knowing their names, so setup is genuinely beginner-friendly despite the size

Trade-offs

!At roughly 65 lbs assembled it is a two-hands, plant-your-feet instrument that discourages spontaneous sessions

!The 2800mm focal length gives a narrow true field, so large objects will not fit

!The corrector plate dews up on humid nights and needs a heater or dew shield

!f/10 is slow for deep-sky imaging without the HyperStar conversion

02In plain English

What These Numbers Mean

Aperture

280 mm (11 inch)

Eleven inches gathers about 1,600 times the light of your eye. This is observatory-class light grasp on a portable fork: globular clusters resolve to the core, planetary detail holds up at 400x on good nights, and hundreds of galaxies show real structure from a dark site.

Focal length

2800 mm

Nearly three metres of focal length, which suits planets, the Moon, double stars and compact deep-sky objects. The field is inherently narrow, so pair it with a reducer or long eyepieces when you want context around a target.

Focal ratio

f/10

Slow and high-magnification by nature. Easy on eyepieces, hard on deep-sky imaging, where exposure times are long and the alt-azimuth fork adds field rotation unless you fit an equatorial wedge.

Optical design

EdgeHD Schmidt-Cassegrain

The EdgeHD correction flattens the field so stars stay sharp to the edge rather than bloating outward, which matters both at the eyepiece and on a camera. It is the difference between a standard SCT and one usable for imaging without extra corrective glass.

Weight

29 kg tube and fork

About 64 lb for the optical tube and fork assembly, plus the tripod. Two people or a strong back and a wheeled case are the realistic answer, and this becomes a scope you set up deliberately rather than spontaneously.

Mount

Dual-fork alt-azimuth GoTo

The dual arms make it far steadier at high magnification than a single-arm fork, and the GoTo database finds and tracks targets automatically. Alt-azimuth tracking is excellent visually but limits long-exposure imaging without a wedge.

02The Polaris Score

How it scores, and why.

87/ 100

Celestron CPC Deluxe 1100 HD

#1 of 6 large computerized SCT

Performance

Ease of use

Portability

Upgrade potential

Polaris weighs optical capability, how easy the scope is to live with, how portable it is, and how far it takes you before you outgrow it — not list price or brand.

03Who it's for