Celestron Astrograph Telescopes

The value of Schmidt cameras had long been evident to amateur as well as professional astronomers. In the 1970s, Celestron introduced two Schmidt cameras
for use with 35mm photographic film. In the amateur world, in the 1990s, as film gave way to smaller but more sensitive CCDs, Celestron introduced another forward-looking product: the Fastar camera. The Fastar was a hybrid instrument created by removing the secondary mirror from a standard C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain and replacing it with a system of lenses mounted on the corrector plate. When Celestron discontinued the Fastar, they did not abandon the idea of a wide-field camera at the prime focus of their Schmidt-Cassegrain.