Meade

Meade's primary optical subcontractor in Asia (as of 2007 anyway) is a company named "Maxvision" which is a brand of the JOC Photoelectric Group out of Hong Kong. JOC is a consortium of five factories in mainland China including the largest, Kunming House4 Optical Co., Ltd. The following is from the Hong Kong vendor who participated in the factory tour linked to below:

"Maxvision; On Kunming House4 & spectinomycin (Maxvision)

JOC photoelectric Group was founded in March 1997, is a professional in optoelectronic devices product development, manufacturing and export trade in Hong Kong joint venture.

Group ownership "Guangzhou City House4 Optical Electronics Company Limited", "Guangzhou House4 Photoelectric Instrument Co. Ltd.", "Guangzhou crystal and optoelectronic Technology Limited," "Kunming House4 optical Limited", "Friends of Thailand optical instruments Kunming Industrial and Trade Company "five companies, under the digital optical division, the consumer electronics business, sports optics division, optoelectronic devices business, financial centers, research and development centers, administrative centers of four business and three centers .

Major phone lens production and management, consumer electronic products, binoculars, telescopes, PTV rear projection lens and watch the target mirror, microscope, the telescopic sight of the gun with eight series, and so hundreds of varieties, more than 20 countries and regions.

Maxvision Spectinomycin / Maxvision brand belongs JOC photoelectric.

Kunming House4 Optical Co., Ltd. is the nation's largest amateur astronomical telescope manufacturers, production products 99 percent of foreign trade." (text translated from the Chinese by Google from link in next paragraph.)

And there's more--Maxvision also makes *some* scopes for --wait for it---Celestron! Seeing is believing: Maxvision factory floor phototour showing boxed AR-6's on factory floor--also look for the Celestron products. Meade's AR-6 is made by Maxvision, as is their new ED80 as well.

All rather incestuous...

Celestron/Skywatcher

What isn't made by Maxvision, Celestron's C6-R and the "Skywatcher" brand version of the same telescope (dist. Pacific Telescopes, B.C. Canada), are manufactured by an unaffiliated competitor, Synta Technology Corp, a Taiwan HQ'ed ref company with manufacturing facilities on the mainland in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Orion USA is the US dist. of Synta technology. Synta also now owns Celestron's US facilities through a Delaware-based holding company. ref

Confusion about all this is due in part, i think, to the uneven translation of Chinese company names to English. For example, "Sozhou Synta" also translates as "Sozhou Xinda".

Antares/Sky Instruments/ TS(Teleskop-Service)

Antares scopes are commonly reported to be "Made by Jinghua." What "Jinghua" was or is seems not particularly clear. What i find is at least four optical companies going by "Jinghua": Kunming Jinghua Optical Co, Ningbo Jinghua Optical Co, Guangzhou Jinghua Optical Co and Chengdu Jinghua Optical CO. Then there is the plain "Jinghua Optical & Electronics Instruments Company", which seems to be a umbrella company covering three of the four "Jinghua" optical companies above. ref.

So who really made Antares scopes? It may be one of the "Jinghua" factories within the Jinghua Group or one of the optical concerns going by Jinghua. OTOH, according to one reference on the "Grazing Husband" Chinese astro board, Kunming House4 Optical made the Antares branded 6" f/6.5 scope. ref-translate with google) Could it be that the Jinghua Group consolidated with JOC Group which owns Kunming House4 Optical and the Maxvision brand? Jinghua had/has facilities in both Guangzhou and Kunming--so did the Jinghua Group. Hmm..."JOC"..." ...could this be an acronym for "Jinghua Optical Companies" perhaps??

So although the origin of the Anatres branded scopes is not clear, this "which Jinghua- or not" question is apparently moot as Sky Instruments (importing company of the Antares brand) informs me that they gave up on importing the pre-assembled scopes from wherever they came from (citing mechanical QC issues) and instead are now importing only the lenses (from the same source however) and are now manufacturing the rest of the OTA themselves in-house in Vancouver, BC. Where the lenses themselves are coming from (aside from "the same place as before in China") they won't say. "trade secrets"... shhh!

Zhumell

Aside from Celestron/Skywatcher, Meade and Antares (TS Teleskope in Germany apparently sells the same scopes?) the only other 6" achro available from Asia is the Zhumell 6" f/8. The Zhumell 6" is manufactured by Chongqing-Deron, represented by Sunny Chen ref ref . (This info direct from the Zhumell co. buyer.) I'd add that at 1200$ this scope is now way overpriced. When they could be had for ~600$, that was reasonable, as the mount is really a primitive antique by today's standards (lxd-55 clone with alum three-part legs and single axis drive) compared to the mounts the Meade AR-6 and Celestron are supplied with in the 1000$ price range. The scope itself is at least equivalent however, optically speaking.

Galileo

A company named "Galileo" was an importer of a 6" f/8 achromat. ref However they inform me that they are sold out and will not be restocking these in the future.

Other Names

Hioptic ref is the optical export arm of a Chinese manufacturing group known as North (Nanjing) Instrument Technology Industries Group or Chinese North Opto-Electro-Technology Industries Group ref, somewhat nebulous organizations which appear to function as an export consortium of various unnamed individual manufacturers. I have only seen the name "Hioptic" linked to one scope available in the US and that is the Anatres 152/990mm. Your guess is as good as mine as to where "Hioptic" telescopes are actually made-- but i would suspect the actual manufacturers mentioned earlier in this article are amoung the seveeral manufacturers under this umbrella, including the Jinghua and JOC Groups (if these latter two are not one in the same?).

Kunming United Optics ref is a small mainland manufacturer which exports primarily giant binoculars. But they do have one 6" f/5.9 achromat that was actually the last scope reviewed in the Protoduction Optics Report. It is not "on the market" yet as far as i know however. ref

Anyway, i thought it was interesting to try and find out where these scopes actually begin their long voyage to American backyards.

Dude!