I bought a new telescope a couple of weeks ago (that makes a total of six that I own) and it’s a beautiful piece of work. It’s a William Optics Megrez 72FD and is the best engineered telescope I have used, solid and strong. The focuser is beautiful, it has a 1:10 ratio dual focuser which is just so precise.
It’s only 72mm aperture but the first apochromat (APO) refractor I have owned, this means it is well colour corrected (the colours all focus to the same point) a common problem with cheap refractors is false colour when you observe with them. The Megrez 72 does show some blue blooming but it’s not too bad. The short focal length of 432mm makes it an F/6 which is pretty fast and gives a nice widefield view.
I primarily bought it as a portable scope to take on holidays etc. it comes with a custom backpack to carry it in. I have been doing some imaging with it on clear nights since I got it, the short tube and widefield means it autoguides much better than the large thin-tube reflector and I have been able to do 10 minute exposures with no star trailing at all! You can see plenty of examples of images taken with the telescope in my Astroimages Gallery.
I now want a larger aperture version, maybe a triplet lens William Optics. Unfortunately they are BIG money, the 132mm triplet is nearly £3000!! Where’s my lottery ticket?
