Absolutely outstanding!

The Astro-Physics 130mm f8 EDT APO tube assembly arrived earlier than planned, the fit and finish flawless, and the images excellent. Astro-Physics did a super job!

I took the A-P 130mm EDT to Fremont Peak (California, near Monterey Bay) July 1st, the place was crawling with MIR watchers and there were maybe 30 or 40 scopes. The seeing was very good most of the evening and the sky clear and reasonably dark but not as dark as usual because the fog didn't cover the towns below until about 3am.

I had the 130 EDT on an Astro-Physics 400 mount with hardwood tripod. Jupiter looked great. Lots of fine detail in both NEB and SEB. The SEB is split by a thin white line. There was an interesting light spot in the dark area below the SEB and a little ahead of the Great Red Spot. The GRS isn't strongly colored but it showed detail and a light line where it pushes into the SEB. This was with a 4.8mm Nagler eyepiece @ 216x. I got to watch one of the moons go behind Jupiter. The moons looked like tiny round balls or discs. One was out of line and "lower" than Jupiter.

Stars showed beautiful little airy discs. I could easily see Antares and its small companion. The for a while the airy disc would hardly move. So the seeing was very good. M13 and M92 showed many small stars. I was playing with different eyepieces and on M13 and M92 I was using between 50x and 100x. I ran through most of the show piece M objects in the Milky Way. The Veil looked very nice with a 35mm Panoptic and OIII filter. Also with the 35mm Panoptic M31 and its companions looked very nice. Late in the morning the 4 stars in Epsilon Lyra split easily at 100x and as I increased power the stars were beautiful airy discs, hard, clean, excellent contrast.

I had gotten to the Peak late and had to set up near some trees to the East. Saturn didn't clear them until very late in the morning. It looked very nice but by that time I was serioulsy thinking of calling it a night.

Again, Roland and all the folks at Astro-Physics did a super job.

I'm very happy with the little 5.1 incher.