Altair Starwave ASCENT 152ED F5.9 Refractor
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The Starwave 152mm V3 delivers rich field views of the night sky using a large 6 inch / 152mm of unobstructed aperture at an incredible price. What's more, this lens isn't your average achromat lens. It is constructed from high quality Japanese Ohara and German Schott glass with top quality coatings, a very smooth polish and accurate surface figure free from striae.
Views of the sky with this well corrected air-spaced Achromatic doublet lens are tack-sharp, have higher contrast and are brighter than any reflector of the same aperture, due to the lack of a central obstruction. Star clusters and nebulae are particularly impressive when viewed with the SW152ACR. Please see online comments and reviews about this scope which has been in production since 2014.
Another use for the Starwave 152mm Achromat is solar imaging. If you ever wanted to push your Daystar Quark or Quantum to the next level this optical tube has it all. 6" of aperture and a fast focal ratio for the fastest frame rates. Check out the pictures with Altair Hypercam 174M Mono, Daystar Quark and Starwave 152mm Achromat to see what can be achieved. Note: An Altair 160mm D-ERF is recommended.
For rich field viewing of deep sky objects such as comets, clusters and nebulae, the Starwave 152 offers a higher contrast view equivalent to an 8" Newtonian reflector, with similar perceived light grasp, but without the maintenance overhead and need for regular collimation. It also sports higher contrast due to the lack of central obstruction which makes deep-sky objects appear to "pop" out from the background for very pleasing views. By using a Contrast Booster filter to remove any residual chromatic aberration, the Starwave 152 F5.9 can also be used for high powered observation of the moon and planets. This often isn't possible with cheap mass-produced achromatic optics of similar focal length. It should be noted that chromatic aberration of this telescope is very low considering the fast focal ratio of the lens system, and that the lens design has been optimised for the yellow/green wavelengths to which the human eye is most sensitive. Therefore visual performance is better than the traditional Fraunhofer achromat designs employed in cheaper achromats, and as reviewer Ade Ashford and many customers confirm, the Starwave 152 Achromat outperforms typical F8 Achromats of the same aperture.
The inside of the optical tube has several baffles, and the multilayer lens coatings are extremely efficient to further improve image contrast. Surface polish is improved to reduce scatter, which is very low for such a large aperture refractor lens. All these factors make the Starwave 152mm a high contrast telescope for achromat lovers who want a short, portable portable optical tube, but with with "big glass" 6" aperture.
At only 760mm length when the dew-shield is folded back, the Starwave 152 one of the most portable 6" aperture refractors on the market today. It will put less strain on your mount too, because the 8.3kg weight is distributed along a shorter length than other larger refractors, so torque / moment-arm effects are minimised.
Together with the Altair Sabre mount, counterweight, and counterweight shaft, the Starwave 152mm is a great scope for effortless sweeping of the richer areas of the night sky and examination of deep-sky objects. The highly tolerant Altair Ultraflat widefield eyepiece range is recommended in particular, as are the Altair Big Prism Binoviewers. Altair Premium CLS filter will also deliver good results with this telescope due to the large unobstructed aperture, especially on the Orion nebula and other emission nebulae. The Altair Premium OIII 6.5nm filter also delivers greatly improved detail on the Ring Nebula in Vega.
Starwave 152 Achromat Refractor Features:
- Fully multi-coated 152mm doublet achromatic lens in a fully collimatable lens cell, focal length 900mm (F5.9). Fine German and Japanese glass.
- 2.5" Dual Speed Rack and Pinion focuser.
- Tube OD 176mm.
- Transport length (dew shield folded back) 760mm, extremely short and portable for a 6" refractor.
- OTA weight approx. 8.3kg which is very light for a 6" refractor.
- Top carry handle and Vixen-format dovetail bar included for easy mounting.
- Altair universal finder scope bracket included.
A note about QC: During assembly, the individual lenses are assembled in the lens cell, centred, rotated and re-centred to get the best alignment and centring combination. A few iterations are required to achieve the desired star-test for each lens assembly. Sometimes this can result in small dust particles between the lenses which have absolutely no effect on the performance of the telescope whatsoever (because they are at the entrance pupil in optical terms), but are inevitable during the adjustment process. This QC process is used to achieve the highest quality possible for each lens and has been used by Altair Astro for many years. We believe it is preferable to have a lens which has been adjusted for optimum performance, instead of a lens which is cosmetically perfect, but has not been adjusted and assembled to a high standard, and instead just placed in the lens cell without proper QC. To our knowledge, at the time of writing, no other company is capable of, nor even willing, to perform this level of quality control with refractors of this type.