I am a relative newcomer to astronomy and have used a 10 inch Newtonian with Dobsonian mount for just over a year (and loved it). I bought the 6 inch StellaLyra CC telescope for portable visual observing at high magnification and small field of view, the choice being between a Classical Cassegrain or a Maksutov-Cassegrain. After much deliberation I chose the StellaLyra CC over a Maksutov because the open front end of the CC would give a faster cool down time and fewer anticipated problems with dew. I also preferred the idea of a fixed primary mirror and usual focuser, rather than moving the primary mirror for focus and the potential associated problems.
My overall summary is simply: This is a fabulous telescope.
In a bit more detail it is not heavy, but it is ‘mirror-end heavy’. Lovely black blades in the tube and shade tubes for both secondary mirror and primary mirror exit aperture to reduce scattered light. The extension tubes are well engineered and easy to exchange when needed.
The telescope sits well on an Ioptron CEM26 mount. The set up was with extension tube, a 2 inch StellaLyra star diagonal and swapping between 25mm 1.25 inch, 16mm OVL Nirvana 1.25 inch and 30mm StellaLyra RPL 2 inch eyepieces. These additions make it even more ‘mirror end’ heavy. If I added a 9x50 finderscope as well it became almost impossible to attain balance in declination, so I bought a Rigel QuikFinder instead (only 84g) and balancing is now fine. I also added a small bolt to the dovetail bar as a ‘slip stopper’, I did not like the idea of the beautiful new telescope suddenly slipping off the back of the mount!
I live in a Bortle 6 area with a bright glow from London to the east and so far have not been able to travel anywhere darker than my back garden.
The moon is exquisite – seen at three quarters full, shows gorgeous fine silvery detail with a 25mm eyepiece (magnification ~74x), lovely detail of the craters and plains. No planets yet (hopefully some time soon).
Used on more recent moonless nights shows stars that are lovely and sharp and do have diffraction spikes. Vega, Deneb, Sadr all beautiful. Alberio with both the 30mm and 16mm eyepiece is exquisite, A and B really well separated and the colour difference very striking and beautiful to see.
Ring nebula – a lovely clear ring even though it wasn’t terribly late (about 11.30pm in mid June) and seen facing the glare of London to the east.
Hercules Globular Cluster – again it was not terribly dark and was seen against the glare of London. With the 30mm eyepiece it appeared as a large fuzzy yellow/golden ball but no individual stars. With the 16mm eyepiece (mag 115x), there is a central fuzzy ball and many peripheral stars, like tiny pieces of glitter. Lovely.
On the western side of the sky, Mizar A and B are beautifully separated with Alcor a good distance away almost on the other side of the field of view.
A really good test of this telescope with its 6 inch mirror in the light polluted skies was to see Bode's Galaxy (M81) and the Cigar galaxy (M82). These are about 12 and 11 million light years away respectively. With the 16mm eyepiece each galaxy was visible in the centre of the field of view (which is narrow!), not able to see both at the same time. The Cigar galaxy a nice, elongated silver grey and Bode’s a smudgy silver circle. I was very excited to see these distant objects in relatively light polluted skies with this telescope.
So far I have enjoyed using the StellaLyra classical Cassegrain telescope and I am looking forward to seeing the planets eventually and travelling to darker skies for the views it will reveal there.

Purchased to compliment a refractor setup that also sits on AZ-EQ6 mount. So I have both visual and photo set-ups. Not much to say other than the accompanying extension tubes need to be utilised in some form or other. I focused during daytime. But at both found I couldn't get focus on stars. My fault. I did t focus far enough away during the day. I had to mess around with the extension tubes. (I would say go for the 50mm first and if necessary add the 25's one at a time. It will save you messing about. The image quality is good. If possible start with a 2 inch eyepiece with a wide fov. Then you can play around with other eyepieces. Not tried with astro cams yet. But other than the need to mess around with the extension rings to get focus all was good.

Great scope would highly recommend. Just had my first clear night pinpoint stars great contrast it was heaven to use with its crayford style focuser. This is my first upgrade from my beginner scope and it blow me away.

How do I place this Stunning Scope..Somewhatbetter than a good Mak and almost APO like..really PINPOINT STARS.
Its a joy at low powers where I did not expect it to be with a 24 Pan or 32mm 70°
The Jewel Box was brimming with tiny Stars... and of course takes high powers easily..GREAT CONTRAST too.
Planets gone now but Moon Fabulous, maybe as good as I've seen in the 130 Apo l.
It's a double Star KILLER too didn't see diffraction Spikes on Castor barely detected on Acrux..thats amazing and small diffraction rings did not blur any image even in average seeing where a normal obstructed scope would esp SCTs which I also own.THIS IS BETTER than those on the aforementioned objects..NO CONTEST.

Love mine so now I'll be getting the 10 next yr when I set up my Holiday place observatory in the outskirts of Sydney.

If there all like this and I believe they are your in for a treat.