mikeDnight

Don't worry! The handbook specifically says "No licking!" as it voids the warranty. 😂

But would its mirror make your mouth water and your heart skip a beat? Looking at the lens below, don't you feel the need to lick it, or am I just weird?

Reflectors can offer good resolution and light grasp at a price that's within the grasp of any serious observer, especially if you want to do serious deep sky study. Reflectors also make great lunar and planetary scopes, and because of the greater resolution of a relatively large aperture, they can reveal great detail. The down side is that they need regular colimation adjustments, suffer from spider diffraction which is every bit as damaging to definition and contrast as CA, and they suffer from coma. Larger apertures can take a long time to attain thermal stability and they can be cumbersom. Refractors can often provide higher definition, higher magnification (100X per inch and more) and wider field views than the equivalent aperture reflector. In fact it has long been acknowledged that a smaller aperture refractor of high quality can often outperform a reflector of significantly greater aperture. For instance, I have on many occasions witnessed a 4" refractor outperform an 8" reflector, and a 5" refractor a 10" reflector. On top of that, a refractor can work at optimum in just a few minutes after being taken from a warm house into a cold winter night. The hardly ever have colimation issues and have piercingly sharp star images with no diffraction spikes. The old CA issues are all but gone in a modern ED or Apo refractor, but there's nothing you can do to eliminate the destructive effects of spider diffraction unless you use an optical window or Maksutov corrector, and even then the reflector user has to contend with central obstruction which subtracts light from the Airy disc and adds it to the diffraction rings. Just incase you're in any doubt, I like reflectors, but I love refractors!

I'm not sure how helpful this will be, but here's a comparison between FPL51 and FPL53 in a ~70mm apo. But keep in mind this is an image, where as visually the colour fringing will be significantly less noticeable. In the second image my friend Paul stands proudly next to his relatively old (presumably FPL51 or equivalent) AT 102mm ED. This scope was visually superb and didn't show any meaningful CA on either stellar or lunar and planetary targets. CA may have been present, but it certainly didn't jump out at me or detract from a quality apo view. However, if I had the available funds and was choosing between FPl51 and FPL53, I'd choose the latter. Sometimes we can get too bogged down with CA and miss the countless hours of joy such great refractors can offer us.

No, I didn't miss your post Louis! My issue is that no matter what is attached to the back end, the 127mm Mak can not use a 2" format to the full. A 2" eyepiece with a near full size field lens has its field lens effectively stopped down by the much smaller baffling. It can't use the full aperture of its field lens.

Am I missing something? It seems to me that unless the internal diameter of the baffle tube is a full 2", there's little point in using 2" eyepieces. All the 127mm Mak's I've used have had a much narrower baffle tube. And supposing the baffle on a 127mm Mak was a full 2" internal diameter, it would eat up a significant amount of useable surface area on the primary; bearing in mind that the thickness of the baffle tube, and its retaining ring also intrude into the surface area. A 127mm Mak is a terrific scope, but its not a wide field instrument, and it seems to me at least, that trying to use it as such would have detrimental effects. Using a 2" back on a scope with a baffle tube less than 2" would surely cause vignetting?

And yet, unlike mirror diagonals, they have virtually no scatter effect and so produce better defined and more contrasty views. 😊

If you use an eyepiece, not to mention a coma corrector, in a reflector, then you might as well consider a refractor. Prisms are better anyway in F7 and above.

The 127ED is a great scope but it will take 45 minutes to cool when taken out from a warm house on a winter night. The 120ED will take around 15 minutes. Also, the 127 is a bit of a beast and needs a solid mount, but visually it is excellent. I've attached a pic of a friend of mine with his 127ED to give an idea of the physical size. My friend tried to talk me into doing a swap for my 120ED after he used his scope alongside mine, but I didn't bite. The 120ED was much more manageable and just as colour free when in focus.

But Richard uses that big silly reflector thingy. Too bright! Our Tak's will see right through it, trust me!

Even if you changed to a SW 120ED F7.5 doublet apo, you will gain a great deal in performance over both your achromats, both in colour correction and in magnification range. The 120ED is an amazing visual scope.

Nice try Steve, but try as you might, those legs are not quite as appealing as the girl from the Celestron adverts of the 1980's!

That's great! The same day I was lounging back in a deckchair around mid afternoon, admiring a simple naked eye view of the Moon, and wondering who else on earth would be nutty enough to do the same thing in such a bright sky. It's a beautiful pic'!

Any amount of light red or otherwise is damaging to true dark adaption, however, unless the observer knows exactly the target it is often unavoidable to check charts of one form or another. The difference between electronic and paper charts is largely academic as to see a chart well, the lighting needs to be bright enough to read coordinates and numerical designations. I think all that can be done to compensate for loss of dark adaption, is to observe the target for an extended period (20 minutes or more) after the red light has been switched off. That way a measure of dark adaption can be regained.

Personally I'd wait. Astroshop Eu are good people. You may find the scope arrives earlier than stated, plus it will be a lesson to the overly expensive shop which might prompt them to reconsider their prices. That's a big difference in price, and your patience will eventually pay off. I doubt you'll have much of a delay because of the virus. UPS are pretty reliable too!

It could be the darkness of the sky background that balances so nicely with the magnification and field of view that makes it a magical focal length. The darkness of the sky background has a massive impact on contrast of DSO's, and peppered star fields. I loved my 20mm Nagler when used in a 4" or 5" refractor of F8 or less. The Orion Nebula was at its most spectacular around the focal length in such scopes, with different levels of black nebulosity giving a real 3D impression as brighter nebulosity explodes from behind the blackness. The 17.5mm Morpheus is well worth adding to the list of potential contenders,

You might consider trying a barlow lens which will double the focal length of your scope, and double the magnification of any eyepiece. The 2X Skywatcher Delux barlow is very good and not expensive. Doubling the magnification though will greatly increase the vibration of your mount. Mars will increase in size and get better placed as the year goes on, but your wobbly mount may be what lets you down. An AZ4 or EQ5 mount would hold your scope much steadier.

I've not tried this but I'm very interested in your results, especially regarding on axis sharpness. Who knows, you may have found yourself a profitable side line rehashing old eyepieces! ☺

A 16mm Nirvana would make a nice addition with its 82° field. It's dark sky background and sharp, wide field, would give you great deep sky views. At £69 the Nirvana is a fantastic buy! The 7mm and 4mm are excellent too!

You say the SW 127 Mak is only 118mm aperture John? That's a big difference between the stated aperture and the actual aperture if true. Have you any idea why?

The Tak is unlikely to get any cheaper as time goes by, but PC technology? As regards your sky conditions, if you're looking for a good refractor then Tak's will deliver. There are other great refractors out there though, so you don't have to limit yourself to Takahashi! (Did I actually say that?)

Others may have much more experience of light pollution filters than I have, but I've found that the greatest problem these lights cause is at the eye/eyepiece interface. By blocking this interference at that point, you can greatly increase your eyes sensitivity to faint objects. A dark blackout blanket over your head and eyepiece really can work wonders.

My experience with the three 120ED's I've owned is that all were excellent. There was noticeable colour inside and outside of focus, but in focus where most of us tend to observe, the colour correction was essentially free of CA. If the night was turbulent and the focus fluctuated, then there may be a little colour visible, and there is a fine colour fringe to the limb of the Moon, but as a visual scope I will always consider it a true apo. The first time I saw through a 120ED I felt it was as colour free as my old FS128. But CA doesn't tell the whole story, and neither does the aperture difference between scopes. All three of my 120ED refractors gave great lunar and planetary views and would often outperform much larger reflectors as regards fine definition, but in all the years I owned them, none ever gave a view of Jupiter as detailed and well defined as the view paulastro's FC100DL gave. Paul's DL was in another league as far as I'm concerned.

Sorry Paul, I couldn't find a DZ star image to compare, so you'll need to rough it with this one from a TSA (sorry JeremyS). I did find a star image of a 120ED for comparison. As you can see the Tak is perfection, however the 120ED as well as being colourful, shows some spherical aberration. It's interesting the 120ED doesn't show an in focus star image for comparison.