[gregbradley]

"there are quite a few refractors in the 120-140mm range that will out-perform the TOA visually.
But: YMMV!

G'Luck!
Peter[/QUOTE]"



I wonder if you have an out of collimation TOA130. I would be stunned if there were any other scope of the same aperture - AP included, that would outperform a TOA130 to any degree. Unless you prefer high mag views and then 130mm would be a little small perhaps.

If you check out Mr Rohrs APO testing site you will see TOA130 optics are amongst the absolute very best ever.

Like .99 or .98 strehl for every colour channel. That is up with or past AP quality. And practically impossible for a future scope to top because there's virtually no margin left to improve on.

TOA design though is very demanding of perfection in spacings and collimation. ExFSO (Peter) on this site though had a lot of trouble with his TOA130 so there must be the occassional bum one around.

I personally am not a fan of widefield APO views, they are engaging for half an hour and then I want to look at something more closeup. So an SCT or Mewlon would be great for that. And the go-tos of Meade and Celestron are so user friendly.

Greg.