Thinking of going left field

[Knighty2112]

After the debacle of my only Newtonian telescope (a Celestron Astromaster 130EQM), I've tended to favour refractors and currently enjoy using my Starwatcher Startravel 120 refractor (and my two other smaller 70mm fracs too). However, I am thinking now of perhaps going left field a little and getting a Newtonian OTA to use for planetary & lunar work, and am looking currently at the Starwatcher Explorer 150PL OTA. The 1200mm focul length of this scope will double the power of all my EP's in the new scope as against when used in my ST120 frac. Plus the extra light gathering of the 150mm mirror should come in handy too. For space reasons I don't want  to go any lager than this really, or get into dobsonian telescopes at all.

So I guess my query first off will be would the new scope give me better views than my current ST120 frac? I realise that seeing comes into play here, but on an average UK kind of night where seeing is around 3, and pushing up to 4 occasionally, will the view through this telescope be better, crisper, sharper than through my ST120 frac after the Newtonian has fully cooled down of course when for example using approximately the same power in each scope? As I would want to use this for planetary & lunar observations then I would be looking to try to get around x150 at least on a average night, and when seeing allowed push it up to perhaps x200 if possible.

Any feedback from anyone who has/had a 150PL would be appreciated, plus any other thoughts on this potential OTA upgrade from other SGL members is as always very welcome. 

Cheers!

Gus

[Putaendo Patrick]

Although I haven't had the opportunity to directly compare the telescopes you are mentioning, taking the secondary mirror obstruction into consideration I doubt that visually there will be a very significant improvement with a 150mm reflector over a 120mm refractor. Obviously focal length is another matter, getting higher magnifications from a shorter focal length puts greater demands on the EPs.

Personally (and debatably!) I prefer fracs for lunar and planetary observation. These are bright objects so aperture isn't quite so important.