It’s not easy for me to give this ota 3 stars, but I wanted to give these thoughts as I know I would have appreciated having this perspective before purchasing it. The GOOD: I initially bought this scope because of the 952mm native focal length, that even when reduced by .80x would still give me a focal length that I would love - 761mm (I was waiting the longest for the ES 102). The ota has great optics from what I can tell. No complaints there. The BAD: The ota is extremely front heavy. You can achieve balance by pulling it down in the rings or adding another mounting plate and letting it sit low in your mount. However, what I found when doing that was that the camera/viewing side would hit the tripod legs. You can choose to purchase additional counter weights to add to the mounting plate to completely rebalance things appropriately, but again, something else to purchase and add more weight. :-( Not my favorite activity. To achieve the proper back focus you do need to use the provided spacers (great that they’re provided), but be careful which reducer or flattener you get. Try to have everything threaded versus compressed. With such a long back focus I got different vignetting and stretched stars all the time. As another measure to decrease movement in the image train, I had to adjust the area that would let you re-composite your shot. There’s one screw that should rotate the entire composition, but you have 3 other tiny Allen screws that need to be retightened after you do it or your whole image train sags. Lastly, and this is minor, but I didn’t like that I couldn’t remove the finder scope saddle and replace it with a *****/orion style vs. es/meade style. You’ll have t get an adapter - again minor. Hope this helps.

I have owned this mind blowing refractor for a year and a half, very high definition views. I have it on a iOptron go to mount and tri pier. Mars is showing detail and colors, green, orange and polar white!! Jupiter’s belts , red spot and moons in the greatest detail. I am 72 years old and have been viewing the skies for 64 years with everything from a Gilbert telescope to Wuestars, uniteons, Takahashis, and up to a 15 inch Dob of quality, this 5 inch refractor is my favorite because it does it all! It always delivers beautiful sights of the heavens.

I could never justify the cost of 5” APO...until I saw this scope! Read the reviews all over the Internet yourself, all 4/5 star ratings. OPT Service was top-notch as always!

I picked up this scope from OPT at the SCAE a couple of weeks ago and I am very happy with my purchase. I have mounted it on my CGEM and in my opinion this is the right set up. The mount handles the scope very well, with no strain on the mount when propperly set up. The build quality is exceptional at this price point, you could pay alot more for a compairable scope but why? I have used the scope several times now and have found the views very pleasing and no C/A anywhere. The views of the moon and other very bright stars are pin-point sharp and false color free. Splitting double stars and seeing the true colors is very cool and M5 looks like a dandylion flower in the sky. Also when I got it home and unpacked it there was an added bonus of a 2-25mm eyepiece included that was not listed in the included items, a nice touch. I met Scott Roberts of Explore Scientific at OPT that day as well and he was very happy to spend some time with me going over the features of the scope. All in all, this scope is a great value. The build quality, features, the ATA style case and the on-going relationship with OPT add up to much more than the purchase price of the scope. Clear Skies, Bob

I picked up this scope from OPT at the SCAE a couple of weeks ago and I am very happy with my purchase. I have mounted it on my CGEM and in my opinion this is the right set up. The mount handles the scope very well, with no strain on the mount when propperly set up. The build quality is exceptional at this price point, you could pay alot more for a compairable scope but why? I have used the scope several times now and have found the views very pleasing and no C/A anywhere. The views of the moon and other very bright stars are pin-point sharp and false color free. Splitting double stars and seeing the true colors is very cool and M5 looks like a dandylion flower in the sky. Also when I got it home and unpacked it there was an added bonus of a 2-25mm eyepiece included that was not listed in the included items, a nice touch. I met Scott Roberts of Explore Scientific at OPT that day as well and he was very happy to spend some time with me going over the features of the scope. All in all, this scope is a great value. The build quality, features, the ATA style case and the on-going relationship with OPT add up to much more than the purchase price of the scope. Clear Skies, Bob

When I picked up my ED127 APO the box was nicked, as perhaps a fork lift or machine might make. I asked the agent at UPS to document this in the event that there would be a problem. There wasn't! Alignment was spot on. Upon opening the box, I was flored at the quality case, packing, and general eye appeal of this scope. Now having a chance to use it several times, I can readily say that this ES 127ED delivers. You could spend double for a high end 5 inch refractor, but you really don't have to. You got it all here. Kudos to Scott and crew for designing a top-notch product.