I've been looking for a smaller scope to complement my TS125ED F7.8. The large doublet is great for visual, a bit slow for photography, but given enough exposure and clear skies it delivers nice pictures.

On my shortlist were the TS F-APO 102F7, the TS FCD100 106F6.6, the TS FCD100 110F6 (comes standard with a reducer to F4.8), but recently I saw an almost new second hand TS 115F7 triplet. The bit longer FL of the 115 matches well with my interest in globular clusters and galaxies, and with a reducer and big sensor it will be wide field enough for most nebula.

I asked TS for advice, and they recommended me not to buy a second hand scope :-), and said the 102 CF-APO image quality was far superior to the FCD110 110F6 and the lowest quality were the FCD100 106F6.6 and the 115F7. If I wanted a bit more FL than 700mm, they recommended the Askar APO 120.

Strangely, I came in contact with someone else who asked the same question to TS, and got the response that both the FCD100 106F6.6 and the CF-APO 102F7 where exactly the same in terms of image quality and their FCD100 110F6 scope (sold standard with a reducer to F4.8) was superior in terms of image quality over the entire field.

I understand that also the people that work at TS have their own personal preferences. It's probably just splitting hairs. I assume all triplets will be a step up from my ED doublet.

I looked at the spot diagrams and the picture collection here on Astrobin, where I looked specifically as star clusters because I think this gives a good impression of color quality and sharpness. What I noticed there is that the pictures taken with the Askar APO look more fuzzy, less true in color, than any of the pictures taken with one of the TS triplets (many examples of the 102F7 CF-APO and the 115F7 triplet to be found on this site), and the spot diagrams of the Askar are also not as good as those reported for the other two scopes.

The benefit of the Askar APO seems to be the whole well thought out package, where everything matches.

Since there're many users here with a Askar 120APO, TS 102F7 CF-APO, TS 115F7 and my old TS 125ED F7.8, any opinions on the above?
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