Looking outside the window last night, I saw something which doesn't happen here in New Antarctica .... Stars!! Although it was partly cloudy, I decided to try out my recently aquired 120x600mm richfield refractor. Fully assembled on the Stellarvue M1 mount it is actually quite heavy and a fairly large setup, but still grab n go, as I was out at the eyepiece within 5 minutes.
Pointed the scope at M42, with the 22mm LVW in place giving 27x and 2.4șTFOV. Stars were nice pinpoints of light, no obvious abberations (except for slight astigmatism - in my eye
) and all 4 trapezium stars were easily reesolved.
Next I checked out the Eta Carina region. Chromatic abberation was very minimal, stars appeared their natural colours. Using the 13mm LVW for 46x, the nebula showed up well, with some texture and the keyhole visible. The homunculus could be seen as a tiny fuzzy elongated smudge with Eta blazing in its centre. Again, stars were nice pinpoints with nearly no CA visible. I scanned over the many clusters in the area, all appeared nice and crisp.
I also tried the 5mm LVW for 120x, however at this mag things start to go pear shaped, with serious CA and violet halos engulfing bright stars. However I didn't get to test higher mag views out thoroughly as clouds moved in.
I can see this being a fantastic scope for low power DSO viewing-- that's what it is intended for, not high power, and the entire package (scope and mount) cost me just $350 second hand (plus an additional $60 for a diagnal). Performance is very good at up to 50x so far, I have yet to test the 50-100x envelope.