William Optics FLT-123 ( APM LZOS
123/738 ) Review
Many of my favourites scopes are four-inch refractors,
because they are portable but capable. All things being equal, though, I would still
prefer a five-inch APO. In average-good seeing, a five-inch aperture will often
resolve the maximum available detail on the Moon and planets (~1 arcsec), whilst giving bright views and images of the deep
sky. The problem of course is that all things are not equal: most five-inch
refractors are too heavy to be grab-and go-portable, too big to carry on a
plane. Bulk and weight increase rapidly with increasing aperture, as does focal
ratio (and so length) to combat increasing levels of false colour.
Some of the few five-inch-class APOs to be really portable
are based around one of the newest in LZOS’ range of air-spaced triplet lenses,
the 123mm F6. Though the particular combination reviewed here - in a William
Optics tube with a 3” Feathertouch focuser - is discontinued
and rare, the LZOS 123/738 lens is available in various other OTAs (mainly from
APM). So, in a way, the relevance of this review may be the lens more than the
rest of the OTA. That’s why I’ve linked this review to both the telescope and
the lens.
At A Glance
|
Telescope |
WO FLT-123 |
|
Aperture |
123mm |
|
Focal
Length |
738mm |
|
Focal Ratio |
F6 |
|
Length |
24” (21”
focuser unplugged) |
|
Diameter |
122mm |
|
Weight |
~7.5 Kg |
Design and Build
The William Optics
FLT-123 takes the best components from different sources and integrates them –
Russian lens, far-eastern tube, American focuser. It’s an approach taken by many
of the best telescope makers (even Takahashi don’t actually make their lenses,
Canon do), but one that often creates a larger-than-necessary OTA. That’s not
the case here, though – this is a surprisingly small and compact telescope for
its aperture: check out the title photo.
The whole telescope
has a well-integrated look and feel, too: everything threads together with no
bulky adapters or protruding screws.
Three potentially cabin-baggage
size refractors: FLT-123, AP Traveler and Takahashi FC-76DCU. Only the Traveler
would go on board without some disassembly.
LZOS
I’ve owned and
reviewed a number of LZOS lenses over the years and found them to be the very
best of the best in terms of fabrication quality, flatness of field and
correction for chromatic aberration. So, who exactly are ‘LZOS’ anyway?
The acronym LZOS
stands for “Lytkarino Zavod
Optychisovo Sticklo”, which
roughly translates to Lytkarino Optical Glass Works.
LZOS was set up in Soviet times to make high-end optics for military and
research purposes; it still does. LZOS also make and test some of the very
largest professional telescopes. LZOS aren’t a little backstreet optical shop,
they are an enormous, cutting-edge manufacturing facility that also developed
the laser holography method of verifying huge professional mirrors.
As a sideline, LZOS makes refractor lenses from the ground up (they
used to make the lenses for Zeiss telescopes). LZOS lenses are most frequently
encountered in APM telescopes, but they have cropped up in other brands too,
including Stellarvue and William Optics (the LZOS
lensed version of the FLT-110 being the most common).
Part of the LZOS
advantage is that they make the whole thing, including melting the glass. This
means that they can tailor crowns and flints to implement a specific design
very precisely – they are not dependent on existing glasses from the likes of
Schott and Ohara, though they do have a catalogue of standard
glass types. This also means they can make bigger lenses too, since
off-the-shelf blanks often don’t exceed six inches (which is why the larger
lenses from other companies like TEC and Takahashi use fluorite, which is available in larger sizes). LZOS can
apparently make APOs up to 20” – now that’s what I’d do with a million or two
spare!
Optics
This LZOS objective,
like most of their others, is an air-spaced triplet, made from an OK4 crown
sandwiched between two flints. OK4 is LZOS’ proprietary high-fluoride near-equivalent
to Ohara’s commonly used FPL-53 ED glass. The glass
is set into a substantial cell.
The aperture
is (unsurprisingly) 123mm and the focal length 738mm (i.e. F6). This is an
ambitiously short focal length for a lens of this size and gives it the
potential to create a highly portable telescope, as well as a fast astrograph.
The thick glass elements and hefty cell mean that it’s a heavy objective,
however, at 2.8 Kg.
The question
is whether this short focal length allows good correction for false colour
(chromatic aberration), which is what apochromatic refractors are all about. By
comparison, a conventional achromatic doublet would need to be F15 to achieve
good correction at this aperture, whilst Takahashi’s outstanding
fluorite-doublet FS-128 was F8. Tele Vue’s N127 is
faster at F5, but is a quadruplet design that actually ends up substantially larger
and heavier than this FLT-123 and still isn’t perfectly false colour free.
Note that the
original specification for LZOS lenses is ‘better than 95% Strehl’,
whilst this one is 98.8% Strehl – an unusually high
value (esp. for an F6 of this aperture). You might have to pay extra to get
this quality now.
The supplied
LZOS test certificate showing 0.988 Strehl.
Tube
Some William
Optics telescopes have had dodgy optics in the past, but you could never fault
the quality of their tubes. In this case, the tube is just as good as it gets
this side of Astro Physics and has much in common with other high-end Chinese
OTAs from the likes of Skywatcher.
The lens and
focuser thread-on, as does the dew-shield which slides smoothly and has a
machined-in end-stop to protect the lens. The finish is a very attractive cream
powder coat, though whether you like the goldy-lookin’
dew-shield ring and dew-cap is a matter of taste (I don’t).
Internally
the tube has several knife-edge baffles and is painted matt black, but it isn’t
as well flattened as a Takahashi tube, or as thoroughly baffled as an Astro
Physics one.
With the
focuser in place, the minimum tube length is 24”, but removing it shortens the
tube to just 21” (or even 20” if you remove the dew shield) – that is just carry
on portable, something rocking-horse-poo rare in a 5”-class APO. The FLT-123 is
actually shorter than a Takahashi TSA-102 (and many other 4” refractors) and
not much bulkier either (though a little heavier).
That weighty
lens makes the OTA front-heavy, but it’s a yin and yang thing because it
balances a heavy camera or binoviewer nicely.
Focuser
The Starlight
Instruments Feathertouch Focuser probably needs no
introduction – it’s the best there is, apart perhaps from specialist imaging
focusers from FLI or whoever. This one is their 3” diameter/3.5” travel drawtube
model that is a rack-and-pinion type, not a Crayford. It has a dual-speed
pinion with chunky metal knobs and its own lock, whilst the drawtube has a
friction lock too. The drawtube has a scale on the outside for precise focus
when imaging and is heavily baffled internally to kill stray light.
The Feathertouch is all machined from a hard, stainless steel
and is designed to hold heavy eyepieces or larger cameras without image shift,
sticking or sudden racking out. In practice, it has no trouble handling an
EOS5D and the AFR-IV reducer, or a heavy Denk’ binoviewer and a pair of Tele Vue
Panoptics, remaining smooth and progressive and free
of image shift. The focuser body has a large brass lock-knob on top which you
only need with heavy gear; it is progressive and shift free.
Another nice
feature of this larger Feathertouch is the rotator.
The focuser body attaches to a simple rotating collar so you can easily change
the angle of eyepiece or camera by adjusting the tension on three brass set
screws. It’s not as sophisticated as the capstan-wheel rotator on the larger
3.5” focusers, but has the advantage that you can easily remove the whole
focuser body, shortening the OTA for travel. Starlight sell a blanking plate to
seal the tube if you do this.
Mounting
This is not
an unusually heavy 5” APO, but it’s heavier than its compact dimensions
suggest. It will need a medium-sized mount.
My Vixen SX2
mount takes the FLT-123 just fine and is rock-steady with it, but it does need
a 5Kg counterweight (less than most mounts because the motors are positioned as
a balance), rather than the 2.5 Kg needed for, say, my AP Traveler.
Other medium
sized mounts – HEQ5 and 6, smaller iOptron mounts etc – should take it fine, but it would overload an EQ5.
It comes with
the usual CNC William Optics rings and a Vixen dovetail plate, but other plates
should afix to the hole pattern, including Losmandy D-dovetails and Astro-Physics plates.
William Optics
FLT-123 with dew-shield extended.
Accessories
The WO FLT-123
comes with a nice, logoed semi-rigid case that is very well padded and
protective, but is nowhere near carry-on portable. As explained elsewhere, you
would need to remove the focuser (no threading required – just slacken off
three set screws around the rotator) and get a different case.
Mine also came
with a William Optics AFR-IV 0.8x reducer/flattener.
Attaching a
finder would require an aftermarket shoe for the Feathertouch,
but at this focal length finding things is easy with a low-power eyepiece.
In Use – Daytime
The FLT-123 gives outstandingly crisp
and false-colour free daytime views, even at powers way beyond any spotting
scope (120x plus). Chromatic aberration levels are very low, even on dark
branches or feathers silhouetted against a bright sky. But it’s probably
academic – this telescope is too heavy to be birding or spotting scope like an
AP Traveler or TV-85 could be.
In Use – Astrophotography
As the full-frame unprocessed image of
M42 below (in a slightly misty sky) shows, the field is flatter than you get with
an all-spherical F6 triplet like the AP Traveler. The corners have slight
darkening, but coverage is good. For APS-C chips you could probably get away
without a flattener to start with.
The fast focal ratio mean you can take
single frames for stacking (like this one) from just 30s exposure at ISO 1600,
meaning your tracking doesn’t have to be perfect (I only eyeball-aligned the
mount roughly for this shot).
The next shot was the same target and
exposure, but using the William Optics AFR-IV field flattener. By reducer
standards, this one is quite cheap, but it speeds the FLT-123 up from F6 to F4.8,
flattens the field very nicely and only modestly increases violet blur. Note
that for the FLT-123, the middle back-focus setting of 76mm on the reducer
produced the flattest field (the back focus is adjustable from 66mm to 86mm). I
have included 100% corner crops from both images to show the effect of the
flattener.
My final image is the Moon, cropped but
with no other post-processing. It’s sharp and very detailed, given the
limitations of the small image scale.
Full-frame image of M42 with Canon EOS
5D and 100% corner crop
Full-frame image of M42 with Canon EOS
5D using WO AFR-IV 0.8x reducer, with 100% corner crop showing much tighter
stars and good coverage.
Crop of gibbous Moon through FLT-123
with Fuji XM-1, otherwise unprocessed (no sharpening, contrast pushing etc).
In Use – The Night Sky
General
Observing Notes
One big
disadvantage of larger triplets is their weight - those kilos of glass cool slowly.
The FLT-123 is still showing thermal effects in its star test an hour from a
warm room. It may be grab-and-go portable, but cool-down is more like a
big-scope.
The FLT-123
may look like a compact four-inch, but its
almost-five-inch aperture reveals a lot more. In general, the Moon and planets
show significantly more detail and deep sky objects are brighter and display
more structure in their nebulosity than with a four-inch refractor of similar
quality.
Due to its
short focal ratio, the FLT-123 has more off-axis field curvature than an F8
triplet, more than an explicitly flat-field design like a TeleVue
NP127 or Takahashi FSQ. However, compared with an F6 doublet or an
all-spherical F6 triplet, field curvature is well-controlled, especially when
using a really flat eyepiece like an Ethos.
Star
Test
This is a
0.988 Strehl lens (see test report above), so you
would expect (and do get) a near perfect star test. That’s most impressive for
a triplet of this size and focal length.
The
Moon
The view of
the Moon is just incredible through this telescope. It is as good as the very
best at this aperture (which is to say a Takahashi FS-128). What does that
mean? In short, a much more beautiful, detailed and involving view than through
smaller telescopes.
At 123x (surely
an auspicious power for this scope) with a 6mm Ethos, almost whole Moon is
visible and it’s just so sharp and full of fine detail, so full of false-colour-free
contrast – a really breath-taking view that makes you want to linger. One
advantage of the flatter-than-most (for F6) field is that the Moon is sharp
right across, even when filling the field – one of the reasons it looks so
good.
A
seven-day-old Moon, still just on the crescent side of first quarter, is
gorgeous. The grouping of Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina look wonderful, as does Rima Hyginus on the terminator; but it’s Mare Serenitatis that
holds my attention. There is just so much you don’t normally see – wrinkle
ridges and craterlets, fine gradations in the tone and hue of the lava plains.
Bessel, lying alone in the Mare, is spectacular – picked out with stunning
contrast, its wall shining in the rising sun, floor half filled with black
shadow. Nearby Plinius with its two central craters,
is a feast of detail too and in moments of quiet seeing, a craterlet (C)
appears in Posidonius next to prominent A. The
outstanding optics means no flare, no bleeding of light to spoil the absolute
hard crispness of the terminator, Apennine peaks catching the sun.
I could go on
… and I did, just enjoying and exploring when I was supposed to be testing.
Mars
For most of the 2016 Mars opposition
period Mars was very low (17° altitude or less) here and so mostly sunk
in poor seeing. However, just a week before opposition (with Mars at nearly 18 arcsecs) I did manage to catch come excellent seeing and
quite a lot of albedo detail on Mars at 246x with a 2-4mm Nagler
zoom on the 3mm setting. My sketch from that night shows Syrtis
Major, darkening around the pole, Mare Tyrrhenum;
bright Hellas and bright blueish limb cloud too.
The view of Mars with the FLT-123 on
that occasion was just outstandingly good. I could see no difference between
this scope and a typical LZOS F8 triplet on Mars, a most impressive result
(Mars is often tough for fast APOs).
Much later – nine months after the opposition
when Mars was a tiny 4” across – I got another really steady view. The FLT-123
easily took a magnification of 295X with a TV 2-4 zoom, showing a perfect
orange disk with hints of surface markings and no flare or false colour. That
said, at such a high mag the merest nudge on the microfocuser
snaps it in.
Jupiter
As with Mars, the FLT-123 gave a
perfect view of Jupiter, free of stray light, false colour or softness. Jupiter
is a low contrast object, but the FLT-123 showed lots of belts and embedded
dark storms – more detail than any typical portable scope.
Deep
Sky
The fairly
flat (despite its short focal ratio) and wide field of the FLT-123, along with
its pin-point stars and large-ish (for a refractor)
aperture, give wonderful deep sky views. With a 13mm Ethos, M42 shows colour
and knots in the nebulosity, wide arms and central spike. Tested alongside a
good four-inch the difference on M42 was very obvious.
Auriga’s
Starfish and Whirlpool nebulae show their characteristic shapes and lots
pin-sharp stars, some with colours. The Pleiades are fabulously brilliant
jewels, embedded in wisps of nebulosity and velvety-black space. The crab
nebula shows its shape and stands out brighter than through smaller APOs.
The FLT-123 FLT may have been designed with the deep
sky imager in mind, but is one of the few faster APOs I have tested that is
also really outstanding at high power on the Moon and planets. This is a
genuinely do-it-all-superbly telescope.
Summary
The FLT-123 is both a fast astrograph and
an uncompromised planetary scope in a (just about) carry-on-portable package. Considering
its large aperture and short focal length, it controls aberrations remarkably
well. It will take high powers as well as a premium F8 triplet like an LZOS
100/800 or a TSA-102. The F6 lens reveals just a trace more chromatic
aberration on Venus than an LZOS 100/800, but normally it’s false-colour-free. Its
field is not as flat as a TV NP 127’s, but it is sharper at high power and
considerably more compact too. It is larger of aperture than the AP Traveler
and a bit flatter of field, but it is a lot less portable and slower to cool.
You can’t (quite) have it all.
Build quality of the tube and rings is
very high and the Starlight Feathertouch focuser is
just the best around. The William Optics tube is thoughtfully constructed to
give plenty of in-focus for binoviewing or imaging. The LZOS 123/738 in this package is a strong
contender for that ‘best all-round scope’ crown. The only real downside is
the (justifiably) high price of LZOS lenses.
So, if I was forced to own just one
single telescope, this would now be it – a small scope that pushes into the performance
league of larger APOs and did a super job of every task I set it, from
ultra-high power planetary viewing to effortless deep sky imaging.
The LZOS 123/738 is another very fine
lens from the Russian company. In a premium package like this WO FLT-123 it
makes an outstanding multi-purpose, portable APO and gets my highest recommendation.
