$Apertura 90 mm Triplet Refractor with Field Flattener and Hard Case — image 1$

Apertura

Apertura 90 mm Triplet Refractor with Field Flattener and Hard Case

A 90mm FPL-53 triplet apo that ships with a field flattener and a hard case, pinpoint, colour-free stars and a wide flat field, the forgiving way into serious deep-sky imaging.

87/ 100

Polaris Score

#2 of 8 imaging APO refractors

See the breakdown ↓

Aperture

90mm

Focal Length

540mm

Focal Ratio

f/6

Mount Type

None (OTA only)

Optical Design

Triplet APO

Weight

4.9 kg

From$1,799.95

Lowest in 90 days

Price tracked by PolarisObserved 36 timesTracking since Mar 2026

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Where to buy

High Point ScientificBest price$1,799.95→

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What it's built forOpen these in the simulator →

This telescope was built for sweeping wide.

A short, fast refractor with a generous true field — the whole sword of Orion in one view, star fields that spill past the field stop. It rewards low power and dark skies far more than chasing magnification.

Widest true fieldsTack-sharp to the edge

The view people remember

The Double Cluster, side by side.

Two glittering knots of stars sharing one low-power field — a wide, effortless showpiece that rewards the biggest true field you can throw at it.

See Double Cluster through this telescope →

Where else it shines

Within reach

Orion Nebula

Stronger structure — embedded stars plus dark lanes within the core

Open view →

Easy first target

The Pleiades

Many cluster members resolved with color contrast between bright stars

Open view →

Rewards a dark sky

Andromeda Galaxy

Faint elongated smudge — averted vision helps

Open view →

Also excellent on

Saturn

Recognizable disk with subtle markings under steady seeing

Open view →

✦

Tight planetary detail belongs to a longer scope. This one trades reach for a breathtaking field.

01What it's good at

What it's best at — and the trade-offs.

Best at

✓An FPL-53 triplet controls false colour so stars image as clean white points, not blue-fringed blobs.

✓Comes with a matched field flattener, the corner-sharpening lens most refractors make you source separately.

✓A refractor has no collimation and no cooldown fuss; it is the most beginner-forgiving imaging optic.

✓The included hard case makes it a true travel-and-image rig.

Trade-offs

!Only 90mm of aperture, great for wide fields, limited on small, faint targets.

!OTA only; it still needs a tracking equatorial mount and a camera.

!At f/6 it is slower than the fast astrographs, so exposures run longer.

!A doublet or the fast astrographs beat it on pure speed or aperture at similar money.

02In plain English

What These Numbers Mean

Aperture

90 mm

A useful step up from the common 72 mm starter refractors: roughly 55 percent more light, which shortens exposures and pulls fainter nebulosity out of the same sky. Visually it handles the Moon and planets well and shows the brighter deep-sky objects with real definition.

Focal length

540 mm

Wide-field but not extreme. On APS-C it frames the Veil complex, the Rosette or the Heart Nebula comfortably, and still gives enough image scale for the larger galaxies. This is one of the most useful all-round imaging focal lengths.

Focal ratio

f/6

Fast enough for practical exposure times under suburban skies and forgiving of guiding error. Combined with the included flattener it delivers a flat, well corrected field across a full-frame-adjacent sensor.

Optical design

Air-spaced triplet APO

Three elements correct colour across the visible spectrum, so bright stars stay white rather than fringed and blue channels stay sharp in imaging. A triplet is heavier and cools more slowly than a doublet, which is the price of that correction.

Weight

4.9 kg tube

Around 11 lb before rings, camera and guiding. That is still portable, but it pushes you past star-tracker territory and into a proper equatorial mount.

Mount

OTA only, flattener and case included

The bundle covers the optical accessories most people buy separately, but not the mount. Plan on an equatorial rated for at least 10 kg once camera and guide scope are attached.

02The Polaris Score

How it scores, and why.

87/ 100

Apertura 90 mm Triplet Refractor with Field Flattener and Hard Case

#2 of 8 imaging APO refractors

Performance

Ease of use

Portability

Upgrade potential

Polaris weighs optical capability, how easy the scope is to live with, how portable it is, and how far it takes you before you outgrow it — not list price or brand.

03Who it's for