Refactors such as the Explore Scientific ED127 apochromat make great all-round instruments, suitable for both visual observing and astrophotography. Not all refractors are the same though, and it’s the quality and design of the main objective lens that is key to their success or failure.
A lens works by refracting (bending) the light that passes through it to produce a focused image of a distant object.
Single lenses suffer from aberrations: they focus different wavelengths of light at slightly different positions – blue focuses slightly closer to the lens than red.
This telescope is among our pick of the best telescopes for astrophotography and our guide to the best telescopes for observing planets.
Read our full Explore Scientific ED102 FCD-100 refractor review
A doublet uses two lenses to minimise aberrations and brings red and blue light to the same focus.
A triplet uses three, bringing red, green and blue to the same focus to eliminate colour fringing.
The term apochromat, or apo, is used to describe a lens that’s designed to bring these three wavelengths to the same focus.
The ED127’s air-spaced triplet is ideally equipped for bringing the best out of faint deep-sky objects and for teasing subtle details out of the planets and the Moon.
Keep it light
As refractors get large they can become heavy and expensive, but despite the generous 5-inch objective found here, the fact that the tube is made from carbon fibre helps to keep the weight down.
The result is an instrument that’s extremely manageable and should work reasonably well on mid-range mounts.
The lack of serious weight also means that it is an easy telescope to transport.
The scope has a focal length of 952mm, giving it a focal ratio of f/7.5.
In terms of suitability for deep-sky or Solar System objects, the ED127 is pretty good for both.
If you’re looking for a starter instrument but aren’t sure what you want to look at yet, this one is certainly worth considering.
A good test star for small scopes is Epsilon Lyrae, the Double Double.
Initially appearing as a fairly easy wide double, good optics and high magnification should reveal that each component is actually a very tight double in its own right. The tighter doubles are separated by 2.6 and 2.3 arcseconds.
The supplied 25mm eyepiece, offering 38x magnification, showed both pairs as single stars only.
Using our own high-quality 5mm eyepiece increased the magnification to 190x, enough to show the pairs as two bright discs, each surrounded by a faint diffraction ring – an almost perfect rendition of what a telescopic star should look like at high magnification.
The low brightness of the overlapping rings gave the impression of a dark separating space between the stars.
In a centrally obstructed scope such as a reflector or a Schmidt-Cassegrain, more energy goes into the first diffraction ring, making it brighter and bringing less distinction to the separating space.
The colour rendition of the ED127 is excellent too – the beautiful yellow and blue tones of the double star Albireo in Cygnus looked vibrant.
Stars were delivered crisp and sharp, helping to bring open clusters such as the Wild Duck Cluster, M11 in Scutum, alive.
The Ring Nebula, M57 in Lyra, appeared with a definite central dark ‘hole’ at 38x magnification.
Focal points
While focusing, we found the 10:1 dual focuser was adequate for visual use but less impressive photographically.
With a reasonably heavy camera attached and the telescope at high angles, fine focus movement suffered and we had to tighten the locks to prevent slippage.
Imaging tests showed good consistency across a non-full frame DSLR sensor at prime focus, with only minor star shape changes in the extreme frame corners.
The ED127 also proved its worth as a great, medium-resolution planetary imaging instrument and delivered some finely detailed shots of the Moon when we paired it up with our high frame rate camera.
To test colour correction, we imaged the lunar surface at prime focus through a red, green and blue filter without re-focusing between filters.
The result was very impressive, and combining individually filtered results didn’t introduce any noticeable colour fringing.
Generally we were very impressed by this instrument, although it’s let down slightly by the focuser and the supplied 25mm eyepiece, which was fairly average.
However, it has great light grasp, excellent optics for the money and is capable of delivering some stunning results.
Vital stats
- Price £1627.00
- Aperture 127mm (5inches)
- Focal Length 952mm, f/7.5
- Eyepieces 25mm 2-inch eyepiece
- Finderscope 8x50 right-angled illuminated finder
- Weight 8.1kg without diagonal/eyepiece
- Supplier Telescope House
- Telephone 01342 837610
- Websitewww.telescopehouse.com
