TheSkySearchers

Thought I would show 3 of my Refractors .

#1 , Long Perng 60mm f7 triplet , this is a very sharp small telescope . I use up to 150x with ease with this scope .
Its home is a SW EQ2 mount and its a great little grab and go scope .
It's such a performer I sold my Takahashi FS60C after 6 months of side by side between the 2 , could not justify keeping the Takahashi so sold it for a profit , these Task's are the best performing 60mm class scope out there and this little LP is 95% of the performance at 1/5th the cost .

#2 , Long Perng 110mm f6 APO , this is a carbon fiber tube with lovely 2 inch focuser , This is my main used scope that live on a lovely driven Vixen super polaris mount on Meade HD tripod so it's super solid and runs sweet and smooth with excellent Vixen mechanicals .
It gives great wide field views at 15x all the way to over 250x on the planets and moon with very well controlled CA , it's a great scope , light and powerful .

#5 , My biggest refractor . Many years ago I grabbed a ' Saxon ' 127mm f9 OTA minus its lens set for next to nothing .
I looked at iStar Optical in the USA and grabbed a 127mm f8 Achromat lens in cell for $630aud . It took about 4 weeks to arrive and well waiting I machined up the aluminum lens ' Counter Cell ' that works very well ( solid ) .
It came with a certificate and test results that prove the reason that this is a very good piece of glass , yes it has a little CA in the bright objects at over 300x , but is very well controlled . I use this as a luna , planetary scope on the best nights.
Focuser is a Sky Watcher 127mm Esprit unit I grabbed for a steal after the owner could not get it to work properly so went Feather Touch , yes it was fiddly and frustrating to get right , but it is all good now and a beautiful focuser .
The mount for this bad boy is an older Celestron CI700 mount , this is basically a Losmandy G11 , so solid and tracks very , very well , fun to use .
This is my star party scope as it draws lots of people ,, you know ' It looks like a real telescope' .

Enjoy and I will post photos of these 3 mounted up and in use in follow up posts .

Thank you.

Great write up and great scopes; nice mods too! Thanks for that

Very nice trio, thx .

Nice collection , I selected the Istar 150mm F10 for my large solar scope , I have to agree they do produce very nice "glass"

As promised , some set up photos .
The 60mm Triplet on EQ2 first .
[/attachment] Fitting Vixen dovetail clamp to EQ2 . And the money shot , its so dark in there it's very hard to get a photo of the lens , but a lovely bit of glass . Did I mention it's tiny !

Enjoy , the other 2 will follow
Thank you .

Forgot this , it came with a nice case , the 2 inch diagonal seen here in the case is a screw on Celestron Schmidt Cassegrain type , that's the visual back connection this scope has . And if you don't know , as beautiful this little scope is to look at ,, being all shiny/glossy powder coat ,, its a terrible ' Finger Print Magnet ' !! Enjoy , comments more than welcome .

One more on the 60mm triplet .
Found a small folder hidden away with about 10 photos taken with this scope . Note the lack of any CA . This one is my phone hand held over a TelVue 5mm Radian giving 84x , these Radian eyepieces are excellent for a-focal Luna photography , large field of view with long eye relief , awesome eyepieces ,
I an so lucky to have a full set 3mm - 18mm picked up 2nd hand over a decade or so , my most used eyepieces in HIGH !! to medium magnifications ,

Nice trio of scopes!! Once a Frac, you never go back

Dave

I'm starting to get acclimated to smaller refractors where I was just a Dob guy for awhile.

I started down the slope with an AR 152 from Explore Scientific which to be honest, is not as portable as it could be.

A couple of months ago I got a Celestron 102mm Achro as I wanted a tube assembly I could sling up on the dovetail using one arm while using the other to tighten the knobs. This was a bit of a challenge with the 152.

I'm also enjoying the crisp views offered up by an f/ 9.8 scope.

Ok , Another day another Refractor so here is my Long Perng 110mm f6 APO in carbon fiber . This is my most used scope as it perform's excellent and is fast to set up . The focuser is smooth , rotatable and holds heavy eyepieces well , my Celestron Axoim 32mm weighs 1kg and this is easily up to the task lifting this bad boy .
The money shot , nice bit of glass ! .

And an overall view of the whole set up , very nice . .

Enjoy as I do this set up .

Here is the moon taken with my phones camera held up to a 10mm TelVue Radian at 66x . , just a tiny bit of colour , it's better controlled than this photo shows .

Nice .

127mm f8 Istar lens in Saxon tube with Esprit 120 focuser all on a Celestron CI700 mount . Close up of the 3D printed adaptor to fit focuser to tube . The mighty CI700 mount , this thing is a beast , so solid it don't feel this OTA . The Aluminum tube seen here is one I made up , it is 150mm in dia. and 300mm long it is unpainted in this photo ..
Extension tube painted black . And , the money shot , this is a very good lens set ! Last one , the moon taken with this set up , TeleVue 32mm Plossl at 32x . Enjoy , and comments welcome .

Nice set of refractors you have got!
Although I have owned and observed through dozens of reflectors in all sizes, I always came back to refractors. I suppose @Unitron48 is right.