Zhumel 152mm (6") f8 Achromatic Refractor

​Zhumell used to sell a 6" refractor called the Kepler. It came with an EQ-5 clone mount, which was barely capable of supporting this large an instrument. I remounted my Kepler on the EQ-G mount in my observatory and relegated the clone to a smaller refractor for a portable setup that I later sold off. The achromatic lens provides good views of the moon and planets, with some purple fringing of course, but the contrast is much better compared to my 8" SCT. I purchased a Baader Semi-APO filter to combat the fringing and it does a good job of eliminating the purple.

This scope was manufactured by Chongqing Deron Manufacturing Co., of mainland China, but is no longer listed on their website (deronoptics.com). At the time when the Kepler was available the site stated they made their own optics for it.
The Kepler mounted in my Exploradome observatory on an Atlas EQ-G mount.
The optical tube of the Kepler has a lens cell that can be collimated, an aluminum slip-on lens shade, and originally came with an 8x50 straight-through finder scope (I used this finder to make my 50mm guide camera scope). It also had the typical rack-and-pinion focuser seen on most Chinese-made refractors.

The changes I made to improve the scope included:
  • purchasing a set of Parallax rings and a large dovetail plate to replace the light-weight cast rings that came with the scope.
  • replacing the straight-through finder with a Celestron RA Polaris finder scope I purchased used on AstroMart and repainted white to match the optical tube. It is mounted using the original finder's mounting bracket and rings.
  • replacing the rack-and-pinion focuser with a Wyorock Telescope Works Crayford focuser. Click the button below to see the modifications made to the Kepler:
Last updated 3/1/2021