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Yes it should be the opposite. I'm surprised it works pin point to the edge of a FF sensor, most reviews of lenses where they state they're good for astro and you look at the edges they look awful, from experience all the lenses I've used distort at the edges even on FF lenses, though I've never used an Art. How have you measured your distance?

I have to admit that I didn't think about it. But today I didn't use any filter.

Excellent results, especially given the absence of tracking. I'm interested in your prime focus arrangement. Do you mean that you are foregoing the secondary altogether? I'm planning to try out EEVA with my 10 dob on an equatorial platform and your results suggest that great things are possible... Martin

I'm sorry, I don't understand. My full frame Canon 6d gives nearly pinpoint stars at F/1.4 while the smaller APS-C gives the coma. Shouldn't it be the opposite? BTW, I bought the 40mm F/1.4 Art with an assumption to stop it down to F/1.8 or F/2.0, if needed, but rather not to F/5.6.

Which Bresser product? The ioptron one is fine, much better than the sloppy fit of the altitude assembly of the Skywatcher one, you might just have to remove the vixen saddle locking lever for a bolt so the azgti has clearance to rotate in RA, I had to use a normal hex head bolt.

And I take it no concern with the motors back EMF causing enough voltage to fry something?

You've done the sync to mount command after a plate solve?

If you're using it at F1.4 I think you're going to struggle immensely. All my fast lenses need to be stopped down to F3 or F4 to get anywhere near acceptable stars at the edges, maybe even F5.6. The apsc sensor makes this worse as it's a large sensor, I could probably get away with it with my 183 sensor. There could also be a contributing issue of not using fast filters.

Lovely report of your visit. This demonstrates their dedication to their products, and reinforces that Televue products are for life. Good enough reasons to buy from them. 🙂

A bit like Nessie, fuel to keep the conspiritulists going for years.

I had a bit of clear sky and tried out the mount with its updated handset. No difference in goto accuracy unfortunately. Added 30 minutes to M51 but then the clouds came back!

Thank you, @michael8554, you inspired me to a more intense analysis. I realised that I used filters from the beginning which falsified the flange distance by mentioned 1/3 of their thickness (L-Pro Canon FF, 2" IDAS LPS-Pd and 2" L-eXtreme). I couldn't sleep well, so decided to remove the filters and any spacers and make another comparison with the picture from the CN thread (Canon 6D, F/1.4). The results are as follows. A starfield from the CN thread: My own Canon 6D at F/1.4 - that means it's the same setup: ASI 2600MC Pro with ZWO Canon EF/M42 filter drawer, exactly 26.5mm of an optical path + 17.5mm of the APS-C camera back focus = 44mm of the flange distance: I couldn't capture so many stars, but I would risk and say that my copy of the Sigma 40mm F/1.4 Art looks slightly better than the CN user's one. It's also possible that the difference is caused by an astro-modiffication performed on my Canon 6D. The question remains why the stars captured by APS-C are so distorted, although they should look better than with the full frame sensor. The goal is to use the ASI2600MC Pro camera with filters: IDAS LPS-P2 and Optolon L-eXtreme which make the distortion bigger. Enlarging the flange distance with spacers caused the coma to turn into radial elongation in some corners which seems to be a compromise. Is the ZWO EF/M42 filter drawer designed wrong? Or the camera back focus isn't equal to 17.5mm? I would appreciate any constructive conclusion.

I've had the pleasure of meeting both Al and David Nagler at the various Astrofest trade shows i've attended. We are very lucky to have Televue in this hobby.

When I just zoomed in on it I was surprised at how much it does look like a UFO with some sort of glowing propulsion system.

Could be an interesting talking point esp as an April 1st story.

Lol, I was waiting for someone to mention that, that pesky lens flare always shows up when pointing at a bright object.

What's the UFO playing at, at 2 oclock ?

Thanks. Agreed, the WO does look the business. There was one on Astro Buy/sell for £120 but sold already. That’s about as much as I want to spend in all honesty. I did see the Bresser star tracker wedge but can’t find much by way of reviews other than Amazon. Will have a look at the IOptron. Can only be better than the SW offering. 😂

Awesome report. Would love to take a tour like that. My proudest moment of reviewing scopes and other Astro equipment over the last 10+ years was receiving an email from Al Nagler asking if he could cite several passages from the review of the 21mm Ethos and the Delos eyepiece reviews on my site and include a link to the full review. I had a astro club meeting that evening and I couldn't stop smiling the whole meeting. Which was noticed more than once.

Just managed to observe M3 with my heritage 130p. Very faint I may add but definitely M3. Found with 32mm then 25mm but couldn't quite get it with 10mm. Still ticked off though 👌

And maybe watch this

Start reading here https://theskysearchers.com/viewtopic.php?t=13708

Please can anyone recommend for me YouTube videos for myself an absolute beginner wanting to learn Astro photography. I late 60’s of age and understand absolutely nothing about imaging so I need to firstly learn the terms & phrases as I don’t even understand them. then the easiest beginners Software. i need to learn from ‘ground zero’ Up! I have purchased from FLO a Celestron C8N AVX 8” Newtonian reflector package, but I have a skywatcher 100ED DS Pro refractor with 0.85 reducer. I also bought from FLO a ZWO ASI 585MC camera, but still in its box unused until I can understand how to Start I intend buying from FLO the New Celestron Starsence Autogiider for guiding because it looks the Simplest guiding for a Learner The one thing I have being recently retired is Lots of Time on my Hands to learn so would like help with recommendation for the most Beginner Friendly software and YouTube videos to learn with. thank you very much, Gary (from York, England)

this may be a hint as to what graxpert is doing in the background here

I"m not sure what has happened with 3.0, it takes over 2 minutes to open, loads a file, then when denoising or background immediately hangs or throws the above error. the log only has the date and no further info. v2.2 worked flawlessly. Win11 23H2 64bg ram, 1.6tb free space. I tried it on an older win11 ver22h2, and it does the same. reinstalled v2.2 and that works as expected. any ideas? thanks