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 LZOS range of ‘Super-ED’ air-spaced triplets, the 123mm
F6.
Though the specific OTA reviewed here - a William Optics tube
with a 3” Feathertouch focuser - is discontinued and rare (just 24 were
produced), the LZOS 123/738 lens is available in other OTAs from APM, one of
which I’ve spent some time with. So I’ve linked this review to both OTAs.
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.
The APM OTA for the
123/738, also shown with a Takahashi TSA-120 (a 120mm F7.5) to demonstrate its
extreme compactness.
LZOS
The 123/738
lens is an LZOS own design (not TMB or APM). 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 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).
LZOS make their own
glasses so they are not dependent on existing glasses from the likes of Schott
and Ohara and can presumably make to a specific quality (bubbles, inclusions,
striae).
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).
APM reported to this scope’s original owner that of 43 LZOS objectives on
stock, just 4 were 98% Strehl and only 1 reached 99% Strehl. You might have to
pay extra to get this quality now.
The supplied
LZOS test certificate showing 0.988 Strehl, a quality achieved by just a few
percent of LZOS production.
Tube
– William Optics
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.
Tube
– APM
This is one
of their premium tubes with the Starlight Instruments 3.5” Feathertouch and a
sliding dew-shield, much like my 175 version, although much smaller! The tube
is beautifully made and finished, albeit in a more artisanal way than the
super-slick William Optics OTA, with a few more grub-screws instead of threads.
The APM
version is a little heavier than the WO at pushing 10 Kg, mainly just because
it uses the larger FT focuser.
APM’s
alternative tyle of lightweight tubes typically have a drawtube and a smaller
focuser, but I suspect this objective was never offered in a lightweight OTA.
Focuser
– William Optics
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 3.5” focuser fitted to the
APM version, 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.
Focuser
– APM
Like all
APM’s top-line LZOS OTAs, this one uses the large 3.5” focuser with a 4.5”
drawtube. This is a very heavy duty rack-and-pinion design – much like the 3”
version but even heftier - with a wide, fine-toothed rack, designed to take big
loads without racking out or shifting. It has a capstan-wheel rotator – slacken
the wheel to rotate, then tighten at the desired angle.
I used one
of these focusers on my TMB-175 for well over a decade and can vouch for its
superb stability, build and lasting quality.
3”
Feathertouch on William Optics OTA.
3.5” FT on the APM OTA.
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.
The heavier
APM OTA is pushing towards the 12 Kg limit for my SX2 and might need a larger
mount, especially for serious imaging.
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 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. The APM version gets a
very high-end Riccardi reducer as an optional extra.
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.
Silhouetted
daytime branches show only minor out-of-focus false colour (Fuji X-Trans
APS-C).
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 modest, even on dark
branches or feathers silhouetted against a bright sky, though slightly worse
than an F8 super-APO like the LZOS 100/800.
But it’s probably academic – this telescope
is too heavy to be a birding or spotting scope like an AP Stowaway or TV-85
could be.
In
Use – Astrophotography
As the full-frame unprocessed image of
M42 below (in a slightly misty sky) shows, there is some vignetting. A wide-T
camera adapter might well mostly fix this.
The field is a little flatter than you
get with an all-spherical F6 triplet like the AP Traveler, but the field of the
F7 115/805 version of this lens is significantly flatter again – a single
f-number makes quite a difference.
The fast focal ratio does 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 without the reducer 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
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.
Cool
Down
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.
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 the 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, showcases
the grouping of Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina and 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, gives 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 Pinwheel clusters 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
Considering its relatively large
aperture and short focal length, the LZOS 123/738 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 William Optics tube
and rings is very high and the Starlight Feathertouch focuser is just the best
around. The WO tube is thoughtfully constructed to give plenty of in-focus for
binoviewing or imaging.
The version
with the APM tube is even more compact and benefits from the heavy-duty 3.5”
focuser; but the price you pay is a kilo or two more weight than the WO tube
assembly and perhaps a slightly less ‘polished’ build.
If I was forced to own just one single telescope,
a 123/738 might now be it – a small scope that pushes into the performance league
of larger APOs. It did a fine 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 OTA from William Optics or APM it
makes an outstanding multi-purpose, portable APO and gets my highest
recommendation.
