Orion Telescopes & Binoculars

For the unrelated British telescope manufacturer, go to Orion Optics

Orion Telescopes & Binoculars is an American retail company that sells telescopes, binoculars and accessories online and in-store for astronomy and birdwatching. It was founded in 1975 and has corporate offices in Watsonville, California with a retail store in Cupertino, California. A large proportion of its products are manufactured by the Chinese company Synta for the Orion brand name. Orion Telescopes & Binoculars ships its products to the United States and over 20 other countries. Orion puts out a semi-quarterly mail-order catalog as well as email catalogs. The company is a prominent advertiser in North American astronomy magazines such as Sky & Telescope and Astronomy.

Orion Telescopes & Binoculars was founded in a garage in Santa Cruz, California in 1975 by Tim Gieseler, who served as its only president and CEO. Since January 2005, it has been owned by Imaginova, the U.S. conglomerate founded in 1999 by CNN business anchor Lou Dobbs. Between the mid-1990s and 2005, Orion only sold binoculars, telescopes and accessories under the "Orion" brand, but since the Imaginova acquisition, Orion has started to sell non-Orion brand products as well, including Tele Vue eyepieces, Celestron 8 and 11-inch (280 mm) Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes.

Orion sells a range of telescopes that they characterize as "beginner", "intermediate" or "advanced", including Newtonians, Maksutovs, Schmidt-Cassegrains, Ritchey-Chrétiens and refractors with or without (sold as optical tube assemblies or "OTA") a variety of mounts. Orion also sells a series of Dobsonian telescopes that come in "Classic" and "IntelliScope" versions, the latter with upgraded accessories and the ability to indicate astronomical objects to the observer aided by a computerized object database. Orion also sells Dobsonians with GoTo and tracking capabilities.