Gnosis

They sure are, and have appreciated quite a bit since their release. I also have the "little" brother to this lens, the Macro APO-Lanthar 125mm F2.5 SL, which is a fantastic macro lens. I'll be trying it out for astro use soon.

This is a stellar lens for everyday use, but is it any good when pointed at stellar objects? Here's a first light test shot. A very short integration time, since I was doing test shots for three lenses in one night, and I just wanted a handful of subs to get a look at the shape of the stars after a bit of post-processing. No fine tuning of the setup yet. There is considerable tilt to remedy, and I will be finessing the backfocus when I have a chance. Overall I am rather pleased. I did feel the urge to stop the lens down to f/5.6, but after fine tuning I think it will be usable wide open. High res version and technical details here.

It does. I'm looking forward to shooting some objects with some deep space around them.

I was indeed. Expensive guide scope but the stars are pin sharp right to the edge of my tiny guide camera sensor! 😆

I bought an Askar FMA180 about a year ago and was disappointed to find that it rattled when I shook it. Sure enough, image quality was awful. I found that the lens retaining ring in the reducer hadn't been tightened sufficiently and the lenses had enough space to shift around within the housing. I put the unit aside when my Askar 65PHQ came along, it being a great performer with no such issue, wondering whether I'll ever get any use from the FMA180. But a few nights ago I used an unscheduled appearance of clear skies to try fixing the scope. I tried taking a few shots, then disassembling it in order to reposition the lens elements, tightening it back up, reassembling it, installing it back on the mount, and taking a few more shots. Rinse and repeat. The gods were looking on me with favour, because after three attempts at this random lens realignment effort I managed to get something looking pretty decent. Once satisfied the scope was about as aligned as I could get it, and with morning fast approaching, I grabbed some SHO data (unfortunately under an almost full moon not far from the nebula) and produced the attached image. I'm pretty pleased with the result, especially after seeing the horrible results the scope produced out of the box. High res version and technical details here.