Ontario Telescope and Accessories

Ontario Telescope and Accessories Ontario Telescope and Accessories, where OTA means more. Offering shipping across Canada, and personal service to ensure customer satisfaction.

Ontario Telescope and Accessories is an online destination for hobbyists and astronomers that are looking for new equipment. Authorised dealers for iOptron, Lumicon, Explore Scientific, Antares, and other high quality manufactures. Don’t be surprised if you receive an email response from us in the middle of the night, or on a weekend. Shop for your equipment 24 hours a day from the comfort of your home.

USED EQUIPMENT TUESDAYVixen Porta II alt-azimuth mount with tripod. Used, good condition. $200.The Porta II is the mount...
08/11/2026

USED EQUIPMENT TUESDAY

Vixen Porta II alt-azimuth mount with tripod. Used, good condition. $200.

The Porta II is the mount people actually use, as opposed to the one that lives in the closet. No alignment, no batteries, no software. Friction clutches instead of locks, so you push the tube where you want it and it stays there, then fine-tune with the two flexible slow-motion cables. Vixen dovetail saddle, rated to roughly 11 lb, which covers most small refractors, Maks and short Newtonians. It sets up in seconds, which is the whole argument for it.

The catch: good condition means it looks used. Scuffs and marks on the mount head, the tripod legs and the accessory tray. No original box and no printed manual. And it is a mount and tripod only — no telescope, no rings, nothing optical. Mechanically it is sound: both slow-motion cables are there, the clutches hold, and both axes move smoothly through their range.

Sold as final sale, like all our used gear.

One available. The photo is of the actual item. https://ontariotelescope.com/products/vixen-porta-ii-alt-azimuth-mount-with-tripod-used-good

Used Equipment Tuesday! Feature itemsTelevue Nagler 9mm Type 6 eyepiece and Delos 4.5mm
08/11/2026

Used Equipment Tuesday! Feature items

Televue Nagler 9mm Type 6 eyepiece and Delos 4.5mm

Tonight has no Moon at all worth speaking of. It is 1.6 percent lit and sets at 8:03 PM, before dark.Astronomical dark r...
08/11/2026

Tonight has no Moon at all worth speaking of. It is 1.6 percent lit and sets at 8:03 PM, before dark.

Astronomical dark runs 10:19 PM to 4:26 AM. The Perseids are climbing toward Wednesday's peak, and tonight is close enough that if Wednesday clouds over you will not have lost much.

The thing most people get wrong: the meteors do not favour the evening. The radiant in Perseus is only about 22 degrees up at 11 PM, 35 degrees at 1 AM, and 50 degrees at 3 AM. The higher it climbs, the more of the shower is above your horizon instead of below it. So the numbers roughly double between midnight and 3 AM, every night this week.

No telescope. No binoculars. A reclining chair, a warm layer, and twenty minutes without looking at a phone.

Photo Credit: Don Bartletti / Angeles Times

Friday we asked where you actually go for dark sky. Fifty-plus of you answered. Here is the list back, sorted by drive t...
08/10/2026

Friday we asked where you actually go for dark sky. Fifty-plus of you answered. Here is the list back, sorted by drive time. The Perseids peak Wednesday on a new Moon, so you have two days to decide.

CLOSEST Torrance Barrens — good, not perfect, and it gets crowded. Expect company Wednesday. Long Point and the north shore of Lake Erie — darker than cottage country now.

WORTH A WEEKNIGHT Lennox & Addington Dark Sky Viewing Area — the most-named site by a wide margin, and it will be packed Wednesday. North Frontenac. Bon Echo Provincial Park on Mazinaw Lake — campsites may still be open. Bruce Peninsula and Lions Head — a dark sky reserve. Bring battery power, there is nothing to plug into. Cape Croker Park, Georgian Bay. The Lake Huron shoreline, in front of the treeline. Bluewater Astronomical Society's E.S. Fox Observatory. Rondeau and Clearville — darkest corner of the Deep South. Bortle 4, maybe 3. One member's estimate, hedged.

PLAN TO CAMP Algonquin — the most-agreed-on serious answer. In the park beats outside it. Not a there-and-back weeknight. Tom Thomson Park, South River. The Ottawa RASC site at Almonte.

A TRIP, NOT A DRIVE Esker Lakes Provincial Park. Mississagi Provincial Park, north of Elliot Lake — about eight hours, and Ron Shields did not pretend otherwise. Certified Bortle 1, basic facilities.

Six of you are skipping the drive for StarFest: August 13 to 16, River Place Campground, Ayton. It opens the night after the peak, so Wednesday is still yours.

Then the stay-home camp, one of the best-liked positions in the thread. Victor Abraham: "location is less important than weather. I'd rather a Bortle 5/6/7 with clear skies than a cloudy Bortle 3 or 4." Others said the same — build integration time over two or three nights from the backyard, work with what you have.

Which is the honest answer for anyone deciding whether to burn a tank of gas midweek. A clear suburban sky beats a cloudy dark one. Check the forecast before the map.

The thread is still open. If your spot is not there, add it.

The Moon is out of the way for the next week, starting tonight.It sets at 7:27 this evening, before the sky is even prop...
08/10/2026

The Moon is out of the way for the next week, starting tonight.

It sets at 7:27 this evening, before the sky is even properly dark, and it is under six percent lit anyway. Astronomical dark begins at 10:21 PM and holds until 4:24 AM.

That is six hours of genuinely dark sky, and it gets better every night until Wednesday.

Two things worth staying up for. The Perseids are already running — not at peak, but you will see a few an hour if you are somewhere reasonable and looking up for a while. And Saturn clears the eastern horizon at 10:40 PM. Give it until 12:30 AM, when it is about 19 degrees up in the east-southeast, before you point anything at it. Low objects sit in bad air.

Sunset 8:28 PM. Sunrise 6:17 AM.

Photo Credit Alan Dyer https://amazingsky.net/2025/09/17/nightscapes-of-southern-saskatchewan/

Big week coming. Two things on Wednesday the 12th.The Perseids peak that night, on a New Moon — the best conditions in y...
08/09/2026

Big week coming. Two things on Wednesday the 12th.

The Perseids peak that night, on a New Moon — the best conditions in years.

And that afternoon there is a partial solar eclipse. Toronto only gets about 8% of the Sun covered, between roughly 12:55 and 2:34; Ottawa does better at 16%. The total eclipse itself is over Greenland, Iceland and Spain.

Eight percent is not much, but the rule doesn't change: you need certified solar glasses or a proper front-mounted solar filter. Sunglasses, welding glass, exposed film and stacked neutral density filters are not safe. A telescope without a proper filter will cause permanent damage in under a second.

If you have glasses from April 2024, check them for pinholes and scratches before you use them again.

Worth setting an alarm for. Around 5 this morning, a thin crescent Moon — 15% lit — sits about 5 degrees from Mars, both...
08/09/2026

Worth setting an alarm for. Around 5 this morning, a thin crescent Moon — 15% lit — sits about 5 degrees from Mars, both roughly 27 degrees up in the east.

Mars is not much to look at right now. It is magnitude +1.3, small, and a long way from us; opposition isn't until early 2027. But paired with a crescent Moon in a brightening sky it is a genuinely nice thing to see, and an easy photo with a phone on a tripod.

Binoculars will frame both in the same field.

August is dew season, and dew is the reason a lot of good sessions end early.Warm humid days, clear calm nights, surface...
08/08/2026

August is dew season, and dew is the reason a lot of good sessions end early.

Warm humid days, clear calm nights, surfaces radiating heat to a cold sky — your corrector plate or objective drops below the dew point and fogs over, usually right when things get good. It is worse on SCTs and refractors than on Newtonians, because the glass is out at the front.

A dew shield buys you an hour or two and costs very little. A heated strip and a controller solves it outright.

If you have been packing up at midnight because "it got cloudy," go outside and check whether it was actually your optics.

08/08/2026

Ontariotelescope.TV - We have made it. Starfest is here!! Check out this solar scope from Sky-Watcher USA. 100mm!!

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