William Optics Megrez 80mm

I would like to warn people who read this article. This telescope is addictive! Many people I know started with one William Optics Telescope and ended up with more..

The William Optics Corporation (WOC) "Semi-Apo" refractor is a small but sturdy achromatic refractor. It is said to have about half as much color as other achromatic telescopes, hence the Semi-APO name.
This telescope is mainly a wide field telescope given its aperture of 80mm and the rather low f6 value. The focal length of 480mm means that it will provide a nice and clean image between 10 and 100 times magnification.

OTA Specification

Telescope	William Optics Megrez Semi-APO
Aperture	80mm
F-Ratio	f6
Focal Lenth	480mm
Lens	Airspaced Doublet SD
Coating	Fully Multi Coated
Focuser	Rotatable 2" Crayford
Resolving Power	1.45 Arc Seconds
Limiting Magnitude	11.3
OTA Length	380mm retracted lenscap 465mm extended lenscap
OTA Weight	2.2Kg
Max Magnification	Between 100-150 depending on conditions
Build Quality	Excellent

Build Quality

The build quality of the Megrez is outstanding. This is true for all William Optics products that I know of - but it is a joy to see that a manufacturer is keeping the high level even for the smallest, and maybe the cheapest telescope in the range. One simply has to look at the telescope to understand the quality. This OTA can not be compared to low budget wide field refractors of similar aperture.. its like night and day.

Performance

The telescope yeild wonderfull views when coupled with an eyepiece in the range between 10 and 20mm. I should also add that the telescope has pretty little color for an achromat. I beleive that 50% of the color compared to other achromatic scopes is a pretty accurate figure. My main reason for purchasing the Megrez was to use it as a guide telescope for the FLT110 but the scope delivered such good quality that it has often gotten used visually as well. This telescope has enough quality to justify the use of high quality eyepeices.
The 2" to 1,25" converter that come with the telescope and diagonal is pretty big making it somewhat difficult to reach focus with long eyepieces. I switched the converter with a smaller one from another diagonal and have yeilded better focusing results.

The focuser is working great and it is easy to reach the critical focus needed on short focal length instruments. The shorter the focal length of the telescope, the smaller the focus area. This means that even if you make a very small change to the focuser you can easily loose the focus and it is therefore very good with a high quality focuser like the one on the Megrez.

Whats in the Package

The telescope was delivered with a neat shoulder strap soft case that have room for the telescope and the nice 2" diagonal that comes with it. The package also included a 2" photo adapter and an L bracket to mount the OTA on standard photography tripods.

Conclusion

This is a great wide field refractor with very good build quality and optical quality. The telescope is light weight and delivered together with usefull accessories like the bag and 2" diagonal. This type of reafractor (arround 500mm fl) is something I can recommend as a starter telescope but if you choose the Megrez you will probably keep it the rest of your life. If there is need for higher optical quality, William also sell the same OTA with triplet ED or Triplet flourite lenses. The latest Semi-APO, Megrez II have even less color than version 1.
Telescopes in general feature very complicated optics and that is why I beleive that it is valuable to spend some extra money on a manufacturer that really cares about the other aspects of the telescope as well.

Many people say that it is impossible to be dissapointed with a Williams Optics telescope - I surely second that opinion.