I love the deep sky....so I bought a new........

[pyrasanth]

Celestron Rowe Ackermann from FLO- I just had to do it........it was like..........being a magnet drawn to a steel light bucket.

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/rowe-ackermann-schmidt-astrograph-telescopes.html

So, for the summer I'm going to put the C11 edge to sleep & put the RASA on the Paramount then I can go after all the lovely summer nebula! I'm going to buy the light pollution filter for the RASA & an Atik 1100 (When my kidney has been extracted & sold to pay for all this!)

Clear nights to you all!....& Thanks Steve at FLO for helping me part with my cash.

[ecuador]

I had not heard of this before, and I am wondering how is it different than a fastar/hyperstar for your C11 edge HD? I can see how the Rowe Ackerman is cheaper than buying a C11 and a fastar/hyperstar lens, so it would make sense in that way, but from the specs I don't understand exactly what the benefit is since you already had a C11, care to elaborate?

[ecuador]

And let's not mention the blasphemy of "putting a C11 to sleep"!!! 

[pyrasanth]

Hi ecuador,

The Celestron C11 Edge is a fabulous versatile telescope & whilst the Hyperstar is very good for what it does it suffers vignetting on the wider chip sensors which are becoming available. It is also a pain to administer for remote imaging & have the flexibility of a normal telescope because you need to be at the telescope to either remove or put the secondary mirror back into the telescope. The hyperstar assembly also suffers from the need to calibrate although not very often and is extremely sensitive to off axis tilt which can throw out the whole field.

The Celestron RASA has a very wide 70 mm field & is as flat as you can really get. Currently there is not a commercial CCD sensor big enough to take advantage of the wide field. The RASA also has four optical elements in the baffle which handles the field correction & by all accounts of the reviews I've read is outstanding. It also has an integral micro-focuser & the mirror is lockable like the edge as well as fan assisted cool down on the back baffle- it really is a formidable wide field instrument.

The plan is to move the C11 back to its native F10 & use that for small bright deep sky objects like globulars & planetary nebula & use the RASA as a very fast wide field instrument which will be permanently mounted so no rebuilding required between configurations as in the Edge.

It is just the flexibility of having two amazing instruments working at the sharp end of the required focal lengths & required F stops.

I have a set of Baader fast narrow band filters so will be using these with a filter slide & mono CCD camera to capture wide field narrow band images like the jellyfish nebula which won't fit in the field of the Edge with Hyperstar- it's that big!

[pyrasanth]

See this link for full info 

[Uplooker]

Lucky fellow, lovely equipment. Wishing you well with the new equipment.

[Chris]

A big congrats from me, what a scope it's shaping up to be!  

I feel so much better about my own astro spending now

[Dave In Vermont]

I had wondered who would be first to get one of these. Congratulations! There is a large article on these in the newly released June issue of Sky & Telescope (US publication).

Clear Skies - after the mandatory 40 nights of rain,

Dave

[Chris]

Harry page also has one riding aloft his small Newt and mount

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/227027-celestron-rowe-ackermann-astrograph/page-2

[laser_jock99]

Nice scope - would be interesting to try F2.2 in dark skies. Makes my F2.9 Newts look positively slow!!

[ecuador]

Thanks for the detailed description. So there really are many advantages over plain ol' hyperstar, interesting. Hope it works out great!

[Liquid360]

Are you certain the lil paramount can handle the weight? They're such delicate little flowers. [emoji6]

Congrats!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[harry page]

Hi

Here is my view if you missed it http://www.harrysastroshed.com/Rasa.html

Harry

[pyrasanth]

The man from FLO shipped out my RASA......it's arrived at home......I'm at work (sigh)- wife has looked at the box & screamed!

On a foot note I noticed with the C11 Hyperstar that the Hutech IDAS LP2 filter causes a purple colour cast. This is correctable but I'd rather not have the colour contamination. I've ordered the Astrodon RASA Celestron approved filter which according to the blurb is neutral.

I don't think I can use any fast instrument in my locality without a filter as I'm the victim of 4 sodium street lights outside my house.

[harry page]

Hi

Look forward to seeing your results

Harry