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William Optics Star 71 f/4.9 5 Refractor

davedownsouth

By davedownsouth
in Member Equipment Reviews

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davedownsouth

davedownsouth

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Went to IAS 2015 in the Midlands today and came away with a new toy; a William Optics Star 71 f/4.9 5 Refractor.  Was just expecting to look at one and order if I liked, but Ian King had one to take away, so I thought why not.  First thing to note is how incredibly small and light it is.  When I got it home I immediately knew I would have a problem as it was far too light to be able to balance it in RA on my CEM60 as I only have a 10kg balance weight, so I quickly swapped the supplied small Vixen dovetail for a 15" ADM Losmandy dovetail (still way too light), added a 3"  dovetail clamp & 1kg weight to the front of the dovetail (still too light) and a weight off my astrotrak bar to the top of the scope; now I could just about get it to balanced in RA :).  With the 3"  dovetail clamp & 1kg weight at the front of the dovetail, balancing in DEC was easy, but might have been tricky if I did not already have the weight.  I will be buying a 5kg balance weight soon so I can get rid of the astrotrak weight off the top of the scope (looks ugly :rolleyes:).  Second thing I noticed was how little play there is in the focuser.  On all my other scopes, the focuser goes in & out loads, the Star 71 only has a couple of inches of movement.  As this scope is only going to be used for imaging, this is not a problem with my Atik one 6, as fixing the camera to the scope with a T2 adaptor getting focus was easy.  Attaching my Fuji XT1 & getting focus may be more challeging, but I am not not going to worry about that just yet. 

Quick photo of set-up:-

star71-1_zpsfnszljcg.jpg

With the scope all balanced, I could not believe my luck with the weather, perfectly clear skies :eek:.  The focuser on the scope is very nice and smooth and locking it while still maintaining focus was easier with this scope than any other I have tried todate.  I will be getting a Lakeside bracket / motor for this scope ASAP, but I am happy to make do with manual until I get one in as it was so easy to focus.  Also, no problem getting the OAG GP camera into focus.  Decided to give first light to the Heart Nebula as I have never managed to fit this in before, and I barely managed it this time.  Only got 8 x 900 minute Ha (binned 1x1) shots off, and a quick process in Pixinsight gave me the image below.  This is completely uncropped and I am pretty please with it as a first go (as usual, the full size image on my screen looks much better).  Hoping it is going to stay nice tomorrow night so I can get some OIII shots and do a bicolour, but I might be pushing my luck saying this :).  All comments / questions welcomed and I will update this picture when I have got the OIII........

HeartHa-Stretched_zpstrn78aye.jpg

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davedownsouth

davedownsouth

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Cheers :), think I will like this scope.  One thing to note, which I know is probably just a consequence of the scope being short, but the tracking graph I got using PHD2 was the flatest I have ever got :).  Also, one quick note on the photo of my set-up in the first post is that like this I could not get the scope into focus and I had to remove the nose-piece adaptor which came with the Atik One 6 and use the M48-T2 adaptor.  This is shown in the photo below and I do not want someone to buy this scope, set it up like I have got in the first post and think it is bust because you can not obtain focus.

star71-2_zpsginx41i7.jpg

Had a quick further process of the image from last night (will do it properly once I have got the OIII).  Wish I had taken the time to frame the Heart Nebula better, got a bit carried away and rushed in to taking the shots a bit too quickly :D

HeartHa-Processed2_zpsztpni8d7.jpg

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sloz1664

sloz1664

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Really nice rendition of the old heart. The Star71 certainly hoovers up the photons.

Just a side question. How are you getting on with the CEM60. I am contemplating upgrading my EQ6 and the IOptron is on the list of potential candidates.

Steve

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davedownsouth

davedownsouth

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Really nice rendition of the old heart. The Star71 certainly hoovers up the photons.

Just a side question. How are you getting on with the CEM60. I am contemplating upgrading my EQ6 and the IOptron is on the list of potential candidates.

Steve

Hi Steve,

I really like the CEM60, it is nice and portable (if you have a car), easy to set up in the field and very, very easy to polar align; although you do have to make sure that the mount is level, otherwise the ioptron polar scope will not be in the correct orientation (took me a surprisingly long period of time to realise this). Since working out how to get it properly polar aligned, I have only ever used it in combination with guiding via the OAG, but before this I was always a bit disappointed that I could only get 2-3 minute shots with nice round stars (which I was not that impressed with at the time). It also took me a while to work out how the set up the guiding, but I look back at that now & wonder what I was messing about at? At some time in the near future, when I have it set up & the conditions are not that good, I am going to polar align it properly, not bother with guiding and see how far I can push the mount, with both the Star 71 & 120mm refractor in place. If I ever get round to doing this, I will post the results. Until I have done this experiment, I would say that if you want >5 minute exposures without using guiding, be wary (or wait until I have found out what it is really capable of (not what the manufactures / suppliers claim :D).

So, at the moment I would say it is a very nice mount, comes with a great, very well organised carry case, is easy to set up & polar align; once you know what you are doing, and will easily carry a 120mm refractor (not tried anything bigger that this).

If you are ever in the area (North Hampshire) you are welcome to pop over and have a play with it :)

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davedownsouth

davedownsouth

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Got some SII last night (8 x 1200 seconds binned 1x1).  Added it to the other two narrow bands with Ha to green, OIII to blue and SII to red and this is what I get after a bit of processing.  Quite like it, but really have to work out how to process NB images better, really am just winging it at the moment :D

Heart%20Final_zpsqlj8hyic.jpg

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