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Barry, where are you going to use to view from? Suburban or dark site?
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I'm currently observing mostly from my backyard in Bortle 6 suburban skies (north Adelaide), but will be moving in October to a new place in Tasmania, south of Hobart, which is a lovely dark Bortle 2 location. Can't wait!
Overall, I've found the feedback/discussion on this thread extremely useful -- thanks. I'm hardly a newbie, but I've never looked seriously before at that 'transition zone' between narrow-field large aperture Newts/SCTs and the ultra-wide-field but very low mag binoculars. So I've really been working to fill my gap in knowledge regarding the rich-field refractors.
The point about a sweet spot in terms of the aperture vs FOV trade-off in picking up the best that rich-field viewing has to offer was very important and something I'd not really computed in my mind until now, as was the issues of field curvature (I'd mostly been thinking about CA, but for what I want to use the scope for [visual, large DSOs], I'm pretty assured that this will be manageble.
This feedback has helped a lot. I've decided to go with the SW120 f/5. It's hardly a large expense, and if I get the taste for wide-field refractor work, I will look seriously at upgrading to a quality APO in the future. For now, a simple, low-cost achro with a decent aperture will meet my 'in between' needs nicely, I think. My SCT will remain my workhorse, but this will be well used too.
I'll be sure to report back on this thread with some real-world feedback once I've got it up and running and tested for a while. (I'd like to take it up to some dark skies within the next month or so, for a proper stretch of its legs!).
Thanks all!