It’s the anniversary of receiving  my Altair Astro Starwave 102ED-R so I thought it would be a fitting time to share my opinion after a year of using this little beauty (bit of a giveaway there!).

Just for context, my reason for buying this scope was to experience what a medium sized doublet refractor with premium glass (FPL53) could do visually. I’d been impressed with the double splitting abilities and clean images provided by my Tal achromat, and amazed by the stories of what can be seen with modest 100-120ED refractors. 

It took a few sessions to really appreciate what the scope could do. It’s a very different beast to a 150 Newt or a C8. It’s deep sky abilities are pretty much what you would expect from 100mm and it’s double splitting abilities are good with beautiful clean and crisp star images without CA. But the real revelation was for solar system observing - the detail on Mars, Jupiter the moon and the sun is amazing. Unless the seeing is very good, it is on a par with the C8 in terms of detail, but the image is cleaner and more pleasing to the eye with wonderful contrast and sharp edges. With a binoviewer the observing experience becomes even better and this combination has been my most used setup over the last year. 

Another asset is the beautifully made, heavy duty two-speed R&P focuser. Focussing is a tactile joy and induces very little vibration with the modest 714mm focal length. The Tal on the other hand was a distinct problem to focus at high powers with its 1000mm focal length and single speed focuser.  

Add to all of this the fast cool down, reluctance to dew up and portability and you have the perfect scope for everything except deep sky, and even then it’s probably better than any other type of mirrored or achro 4” scope. I recently viewed the entire Veil complex with a 2” 38mm  eyepiece giving 3.8 degree FOV and a UHC filter - quite beautiful.  At £900 it isn’t cheap and is hard to compare value for money with a 4” achro or 6” newt costing a quarter as much, but for me it’s been money very well spent and I would probably only ever sell it to experience the joys of a premium Tak! 👍