Flagstaff, Arizona Est. 2023 · Hand-tested optics
StarHunter makes telescopes for people who would rather be outside. Every mirror and lens is interferometer-tested in our workshop in the world's first International Dark Sky City — then signed by the person who tested it.
00 Why we exist
Most people buy a telescope once, look at the Moon twice, and put it in a closet. We think that's a design problem — so we build instruments that are quick to set up, honest about what they show, and good enough to keep for thirty years.
telescopes shipped to observers in 31 countries since our first batch in 2024.
minimum wavefront accuracy. Every optic is tested; nothing is sampled.
minutes from car trunk to first light, on average, with Meridian 130.
optics warranty, transferable. Recollimation and recoating are free for life.
01 The telescopes
We make a short line on purpose. Each design took eighteen months and roughly forty prototypes. Pick by how you observe, not by how much you spend.
A 72mm apochromat that fits in a backpack and is ready before your eyes adapt. Pin-sharp stars to the edge, zero color fringing on Jupiter.
$1,290OTA + carbon tripod
ReservePoint it at the sky and it figures out where it is in about eight seconds. Then it finds and tracks anything you tap — while you still look through a real eyepiece.
$2,480Complete kit + app
ReserveEight inches of hand-figured mirror that collapses into a box the size of a carry-on. Built for galaxies, globular clusters, and staying up too late.
$3,950Ships in 6–8 weeks
Reserve02 Aperture Lab
Aperture is the one number that matters most. Drag the slider to compare your dark-adapted eye with each StarHunter scope — the star field on the right is an illustrative simulation of what each aperture reveals.
Estimates assume a 7 mm dark-adapted pupil, Dawes' limit, and a moderately dark site (Bortle 3).
03 Craft
We don't outsource the part that matters. Mirrors are figured and tested in Flagstaff; you get the actual interferogram of your optic, not a brochure.
Optics
Our Zygo-class Fizeau interferometer maps each surface to a few nanometres. If a mirror misses λ/10 peak-to-valley, it goes back on the polishing machine — not into a box.
Mechanics
Harmonic gearboxes on both axes. Meridian tracks within 2 arcseconds over an hour — silently, at 4 W.
Materials
Machined 6061 aluminium, carbon-fibre truss poles, Baltic birch rocker boxes from a family mill in Oregon. No plastic where load goes through.
StarHunter Field app
Tonight's best targets ranked by your aperture, your horizon and the Moon. Plate-solve alignment, observing logs, and a red-light interface that never blinds you. Free, forever, no account required.
04 Tonight
Calculated live from your device's clock. Targets are for the evening sky at mid-northern latitudes — the same list our team will be looking at.
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05 Our story
In the winter of 2022, Maren Okafor — an optical engineer who'd spent a decade on satellite cameras — took her niece to a public star party outside Flagstaff. The girl looked through a cheap department-store telescope, saw a smeared, wobbling Saturn, and said politely that it looked better on the internet.
Maren went home and started grinding a mirror in her garage. Six months later she'd convinced Theo Lindqvist, a mechanical designer from a drone startup, and Wei-Lin Hsu, who'd built the star-chart engine for a planetarium software company, that the world needed a different kind of telescope company: small, obsessive, and openly measured.
StarHunter is now twenty-three people in a converted railway workshop on Route 66. We still test every optic by hand. We still answer support email ourselves. And on clear nights, the parking lot fills with our own telescopes.
An 8″ mirror figured by hand in a garage. Took 41 hours.
Led by dark-sky advocates and two former observatory directors.
180 Lumen 72s. Sold out in 36 hours on a single newsletter.
Our plate-solving mount, built and calibrated in-house.
Vela 200 moves from limited run to full production. 4,200+ scopes under clear skies.
Co-founder · CEO & Optics
Co-founder · Mechanical
Co-founder · Software
Head of Optical Testing
06 From the field
My kids now argue about whose turn it is at the eyepiece. That never happened with the last telescope.
I split Epsilon Lyrae on the first night, in poor seeing, with a 72mm. The interferogram in the box wasn't marketing.
Fits in the back of a hatchback, sets up in the dark by feel. The spiral arms of M51 were simply there.
07 Journal
Observing guides, engineering deep-dives, and the occasional confession about a prototype that didn't work.
Yes, it's possible. A star-hop from Mirach, the right eyepiece, and what to realistically expect under Bortle 7.
Rosa on zonal errors, turned-down edges, and the single number that hides them. With interferograms from 312 mirrors.
Nineteen staff, eleven telescopes and one very cold night on the San Francisco Peaks. 214 meteors logged.
08 Reserve
Fully refundable until your telescope ships. We'll email you before anything is charged.