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Skywatcher Esprit ED APO Triplets have arrived!

FLO

By FLO
in Sponsor Announcements and Offers

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John

John

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Posted
I bet whoever orders one of these new scopes will receive it with the rings for the ED120 loosely wrapped around it in a box without a finder.

Why do you say that ?.

Just interested :)

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FLO

FLO

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Yes, that was rather embarrassing. Skywatcher packed the wrong tube-rings! Mike was the first to receive an 8-inch CF Quattro, he sounded the alarm so all other orders were put on hold while we wait on the correct rings to arrive from China.

Regarding the Esprit triplet refractors, we have been asked whether we will have one with us when we visit Kelling this month. Unfortunately we won't. We will however have our own William Optics FLT-123 f6 LZOS triplet.

Whilst James and I often pack smaller items for collection at Kelling we are not setting up stall or trading so please don't wave money at us :)

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FLO

FLO

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We need to bear in mind that Skywatcher's marketing is quite different to that practised by existing premium brands. The Esprit's pricing is lower but they don't have a prestigious name and they are being offered through outlets not normally associated with premium brands (I doubt we will ever see a TEC or APM offered through a camera-store or on Ebay).

In my humble opinion the best defense for competing premium brands is to become more premium. William Optics are clearly doing this. The William Optics FLT-123 is a good recent example, they have gone to LZOS for the objective and have fitted a brand new R&P focuser that will impress even those associated with Moonlite and Feathertouch. And they include an interferometer report that confirms a Strehl-ratio of at least 0.95 It doesn't get much better than that.

Price is always an important factor but so too is peace-of-mind, quality assurance and resale value.

For the premium end of the market the next 2-3 years are going to be very interesting.

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Ben Ritchie

Ben Ritchie

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Does it work? That's the only thing that has ever interested me.

And me, although i'd probably add the caveat "...under UK skies" too. With light pollution, hazy skies and 2.5" seeing then there frequently aren't the conditions to really show what top-level optics can do. I've said it before, but i'd bet that on 95% of nights you couldn't tell my AP130 from any other 130mm refractor. On the remaining 5% the AP is remarkable, and I had an absolutely magical time in Pickering 9 seeing last winter, but I think in the majority of cases we're heavily limited by conditions here, not optics.

I think i've seen one really poor Skywatcher 'scope, an early 120ED that was in no way apochromatic, but in my experience they do turn them out at a pretty reliable level.

curious what "professional" means in this context though :)

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AndyUK

AndyUK

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Seeing thde above post, I just thought I'd have a quick search to see if there were any existing 150ED Doublets... and came across what appears to be ANOTHER new Skywatcher 150 Triplet, but this time it's a Carbon Fibre model:

Sky-Watcher Quantum 150ED APO Triplet Refractor Telescope - Telescopes at Telescopes

Okay, it's a US site, and the price is $6,995 (reduced by 44% from the bargain starting price of $12,597.95 :)), but even so, it makes you wonder what else SW might have released (I couldn't find a SW 150 doublet though - Sorry!*)

(EDIT: * I lied - There's a 152/f6.5 doublet on that site, but it doesn't give any crown element info)

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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any idea if we would see a 150ed 'doublet' like the 120ED at an afforable price - or am i missing the point? :)

Seen the post on affordable triplets so understand constraints for those.

I'm not an expert but I suspect that there is a practical upper limit for colour correction at faster f ratios in doublets. Even triplets don't get below f7 in the larger sizes.

Good to see WO getting serious about their focusers and moving to R and P. Crayfords work when correctly adjusted. R and Ps just work in my experience. The big thing with 2 speed Crayfords is keeping both knobs working at the same time. Still haven't cracked it on my Lunt.

Olly

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johninderby

johninderby

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Re: Lack of 150 ED Doblets

One thing I did read a little while ago was that the supply of glass blanks big enough the 150mm EDs was comparatively limited so perhaps they don't want to "waste" that quality of blanks on just a doublet.

Don't know if that's true or just a rumour. :)

John

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vlebo

vlebo

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I have always liked the idea of a large (150 ) doublet refractor and was wondering if the views through one would be that much better than through my 120 Equinox. Does anyone know if there are any out there with the same build quality as the Equinox ?

Vlebo

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John

John

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I have always liked the idea of a large (150 ) doublet refractor and was wondering if the views through one would be that much better than through my 120 Equinox. Does anyone know if there are any out there with the same build quality as the Equinox ?

Vlebo

I've owned a couple of 150mm F/8 doublet achromats which I've combined with an Aries Chromacor corrector to largely remove chromatic abberation. I've recently bought a Skywatcher ED120 Pro which I believe has similar optics to the Equinox 120.

From my experience of the larger refractors and now of the ED120 doublet I'd say that the basic difference is that which extra aperture delivers and, to me, is mostly evident in deep sky objects. I'm a visual observer but I suspect that imagers would want / need triplet levels performance in terms of CA correction and other qualities.

At one time it was rumoured that Skywatcher were contemplating larger ED doublet refractors but they have clearly, I believe, decided that they would rather aim at the imaging market with these new triplets.

My problem with my 150mm "ED" doublets was that mounting the things was really challenging. I've been rather surprised actually just how compact and managable the ED120 is :)

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Ben Ritchie

Ben Ritchie

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My experience is similar to John's - I rather like a big achromat, especially for lower power visual use, but they're big and cumbersome 'scopes with quite high mount requirements that rather affects the 'bang for the buck' of the OTA itself.

There is also a tendency to build big achromats down to a budget too, which means that things like the focuser can be rather poor (e.g. the Meade AR6 one, which was a horrible feature of an otherwise quite nice 'scope )

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riklaunim

riklaunim

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Don't expect big APO to scale to low prices + if they would made a cheaper one it would kill the brand strength of the better one (China has the problem of beeing seen as cheap and poor quality China quite easily).

Few carbon versions (Omegon) were sold in Poland and people seems to be very pleased. Last post I saw was 120 SW ED vs new 120 APO with big thumbs up for the new thing.

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coliea

coliea

Posted
Posted
You can buy a TEC for that.

Skywatcher's problem in a nutshell. IMO for these Skywatcher triplets to sell they have to be less expensive inch for inch than say a TEC140, which even at today's poor exchange rate is retailing for ~£3600.

Be very interesting to see how many of these Skywatcher can shift.

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