Celestron

Celestron EdgeHD 11 OTA - 11" f/10 Aplanatic HD OTA - CGE Dovetail

An 11-inch aplanatic SCT with a flat, coma-free field, the long-focal-length instrument for galaxies, globulars, planetary nebulae and planets, in a tube one person can still lift.

91/ 100

Polaris Score

#1 of 5 11-inch imaging SCTs

See the breakdown ↓

Aperture

280mm

Focal Length

2800mm

Focal Ratio

f/10

Mount Type

None (OTA only)

Optical Design

Schmidt-Cassegrain (EdgeHD)

Weight

12.5 kg

From$4,499

Lowest in 90 days

Price tracked by PolarisObserved 36 timesTracking since Mar 2026

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Where to buy

Agena AstroProductsPartnerBest price$4,499→High Point Scientific$4,499→

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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 at 2800mm focal length resolves fine detail in galaxies, globular clusters and planets.

✓EdgeHD optics flatten the field and remove the coma of a standard SCT, so stars stay sharp to the corners on a camera.

✓A compact folded design packs huge focal length into a tube far shorter than an equivalent refractor or Newtonian.

✓Works for both high-power visual observing and long-focal-length imaging, a rare dual-purpose instrument.

Trade-offs

!OTA only, and its 12.5kg demands a heavy, expensive equatorial mount.

!Long f/10 focal length is slow and narrow, a reducer is almost mandatory for deep-sky imaging.

!High focal length magnifies seeing and tracking errors; it rewards good skies and guiding.

!Cooldown takes time; the closed tube needs to reach ambient for sharp views.

02In plain English

What These Numbers Mean

Aperture

280 mm (11 inch)

Eleven inches of aperture, about 1,600 times the light grasp of your eye. It has enough resolving power to separate close double stars, show detail inside planetary nebulae, and record small galaxies with real structure when a camera is attached.

Focal length

2800 mm

Very long. It frames small, bright targets such as planetary nebulae, compact galaxies and globular clusters, and it magnifies easily. Wide-field work needs the 0.7x reducer, which brings it to 1960 mm.

Focal ratio

f/10

Slow, so imaging exposures are long and guiding must be precise at this focal length. The upside is that eyepieces perform well and high magnification arrives without a Barlow.

Optical design

EdgeHD aplanatic Schmidt-Cassegrain

Corrector optics inside the baffle tube remove the coma and field curvature a standard SCT shows, so stars stay round across a full-frame sensor. That is what makes an EdgeHD an imaging instrument rather than only a visual one.

Weight

12.5 kg tube

About 28 lb of tube alone. Compact for its aperture, but with a camera train attached it demands a mount in the 20 kg class or above, which is where most of the total cost lands.

Cooldown

90 minutes or more

A large sealed tube with a thick corrector takes a long time to reach ambient temperature, and until it does, fine detail stays soft. Cooling fans and an early start are standard practice with this size.

02The Polaris Score

How it scores, and why.

91/ 100

Celestron EdgeHD 11 OTA - 11" f/10 Aplanatic HD OTA - CGE Dovetail

#1 of 5 11-inch imaging SCTs

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