I recently purchased the WO Z73. First off, OPT was the only place I could find who had it in sto m, so a HUGE thank you for that. Ordering was a breeze and shipping was very fast. I will absolutely order from you again even though I live in Canada

I have been doing visual astronomy for about five years, started with an 8" Dob & moved to a 12" Dob after about 18 months. Bought a DSLR a year ago and this year decided to try astrophotography. I went with an EQ-6 R Pro for the mount so I could add an 8" or 10" Newt later on (I really love my light buckets), but after some YouTube and Google research I went with a refractor. I love the ZenithStar 73. Now I have to say that I do enjoy hunting galaxies more than nebulae, but I can now see the appeal of a short focal length scope. The build quality of the scope is great. So far the only little nitpick I have is a slight shift of the image when you reverse the movement of the focuser. I also own an ETX125PE, if you want to see a bad case of image shift when you reverse direction of a focuser try an ETX MAK. All in all this is a great first refractor for astrophotography for me. The aperture and focal are great for wide field objects like NGC7000 and I have even gotten some detail on M101 so far. I have to say I was a little skeptical of giving up my large aperture and long focal length but have been pleasantly surprised by this scope. Now I know purest will cringe at the fact I did not purchase a field flattener at the time I purchased the scope, tough they can cringe and cry all they want. This is for me , not them. For now I have no need of a flattener. If I decide I do need one later I can get one eventually. As for the ZenithStar 73, it is a great little scope and I would recommend it for serious consideration to anyone looking to start astrophotography. As for OPT this is the second time I have purchased from them and it was as enjoyable as the first. OPT is at the top of the list for me when I am thinking of an astronomy purchase.

Love the scope. I really wanted the red trim, but after reading more than one back order horror story, I settled for gold. Since the flatener is also gold and only 50mm Uniguide I could find in stock was gold, I guess that worked out.