Vash

Thanks, I will give that a go!

Thanks for the tip. I will give Astrosharp a try! What process in siril did you use for star reduction? Was it deconvolution or something else?

Plastic lenses can be of very high quality. All mobile phone camera lenses are injection moulded plastic lens. Plastic lenses usually have lower refractive indexes than glasses and the range of abbe numbers are more limited. Lens designers can make up for those short comings by using extended aspheric lens shapes. Just Google 'mobile phone camera lens design' to see some examples. When it comes to telescopes, plastic lenses could probably be used but it would probably mean additional elements to produce a well corrected image. Injection moulding lenses is also very expensive in small quantities but becomes incredibly cheap if you are making millions of lenses. I would guess that the volume of sales of telescopes makes plastic lenses not competitive with ground glass lenses.

Really great setup. Thanks for the info.

Really great image, thanks for posting. What scope and camera did you use?

Thank you!

Very nice. I keep wanting to try doing a mosaic but keep chickening out because of how few clear nights I get!

Great images. What telescope did you use?

Not to mention a name change to 'SuburbanTak' A nivea write up, thank you. Now I have to buy the svbony zoom though!

+1 for the zenithstar 66. Mine lives by the back door mounted and ready to go. I can be out looking at the moon or open clusters in 10 seconds. Ideal for those days when I am too tired after work to commit ot to a long session with the dob. The first night out with the askar 103apo will stick with me for a long time. The first target I viewed was the double cluster and it was spectacular.

Really amazing pictures. I live 20 minutes away from the Fen and regularly take the dog there for a walk (swim). It is really great to see a place I know well in a very different light, thank you.

Finally had some clear skies! Another two images with the askar 103apo and modified canon 800d camera. Both processed with siril and starnet++ M42 taken with the 0.8x reducer. About 4 hours of 45s subs. M45 taken with the 0.6x reducer. Only managed 1h of 60s subs on this target. Hope to add more data if I get more clear skies.

Thanks so much. I really like this software. It might be useful to others, many zwo planetary cams fit inside a 2" focuser and the included wide angle lenses work well for collimation.

I was also quite surprised but it's clear that quite a lot of effort went into making work as well as it does. The reducer is big and there is a lot of glass in there. It also sits deeply, a good 4" or so, inside the focuser and you need to shorten the tube by removing the middle section. I am sure this is not the first scope to do this but it seems to be quite novel given what is currently on the market, especially at this price point. Now if I wanted a scope only for close to 400mm focal length so I would only use the 0.6x reducer, I probably would have gone for an 80 or 90mm scope and a 0.8x reducer. As it stands with my other scopes, I will mostly be using the 103apo with the 0.8x reducer and having the other two flatteners just increases the versitiliy of the scope.

I have now taken at least 1 image with each flattener and reducer. My imaging camera is a badder modified canon 800d so aps-c size sensor. Honestly I can say that I am very pleased with the stars with all flatteners. Off the back of Nico's review I was prepared for some blue halos with the 0.6x reducer when imaging without a duel narrowband filter but I don't really see them when focused correctly, even on bright stars. I found that with the 0.6x reducer the focus position is very sensitive, live view on a very bright star shows a halo appearing if my focus is slightly off. So far I have only been focusing manually but tonight (first clear night in months!) I will try it with my auto focuser and see how well it does. To me, the 1x and 0.8x cannot be faulted right out to the corner on my aps-c sensor. I know the 0.6x isn't perfect but I would rather have it that not because of the speed it gives and it makes the scope more versatile. The post below is from a few months back using the scope and 0.6x reducer. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/415628-m31-with-askar-103apo-and-06x-reducer/#comment-4431781

I took a bit of a jump getting this scope before there were many reviews but I have been really impressed, especially given the versitiliy and price

Thanks Stuart, the crop was quite minimal. Below is an un cropped version.

Thanks. I have been enjoying using this scope. The options of focal length with the 3 flatteners makes it quite versatile for framing. I just wish I had a few more clear skies!

Thanks both! I cropped a tiny bit to remove stacking/dither artifacts at the very edges but otherwise it is almost the full aps-c sensor size. I did use starnet to remove the stars and stretched them separately from the galaxy but both stars and galaxy only got a normal histagram stretch (I haven't spent the time to understand generalized hyperbolic stretch yet!)

M31 taken with the askar 103 apo and 0.6x reducer using a canon 800d. A total of almost 9 hours using 2 min subs. Quite pleased with how this one came out (click for full resolution).

Thanks so much for the write up and your mount deign looks really great. I am planning to use ASA to make an alt az mount and clamp for an ultra light grab and go rig for a small 66mm WO refractor. In time I also plan on making a larger alt az for my larger refractor and newtonian. Luckily I have have access to large mills and lathes at work, but that is a future project for now!

@vlaiv sorry to revive an old thread. Did you ever test the clamp or make any different versions. Did you make any progress with your alt az mount/scope project? I am about to get a printer and plan to try and make a vixen clamp + alt az mount for a small refractor.

I have been using the free version of 'neat image' for a few months and have been quite happy with it. There are a lot of perameters to play with and I have always managed to find a nice balance between noise reduction and preserving detail.

So far I cannot fault it. To me the fit, finish and quality are brilliant but I have never owned a comparable scope. The closest would be a William optics 66 zenithstar. I had no problems with my scope or any of the flatteners. Visually the scope is great, the famous double cluster was brilliant in a 16mm nirvana eyepiece. With a 5mm bst there was a lot of contrast in jupiter and the GRS was immediately obvious. In my opinion there was more contrast than with a 127mm mak. For imaging, thanks to the weather I have only had the one image so far of the iris but it was flawless. It was easy to focus manually and held focus well after a 30 minute cool down. I have had no issues so far. Hopefully we get more clear nights soon!

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/895629-iris-nebula-with-askar-103apo-and-06x/ My first image with the scope and 0.6x reducer. For me there was not too much chromatic aberration with the reducer compared to Nico's result. It could be because the baader mod filter only let's thought light above about 420nm, as opose to the 400nm of the ir cut filter in the camera Nico used.