ultranova

12 minutes ago, geordie85 said:

William optics themselves have discontinued the star 71.

That's why I'm very thankful to FLO for reducing/ fixing and selling the ones they had returned as I was able to get one 

Looking at  a earlier post, it says they are waiting for a delivery of the new star 71's sometime in late June

if they are going to be the same FL and  speed I don't know

Hi Steve, Just a thought, Does this now mean FLO will continue to sell the star 71

Now that the optics can be sorted, or have WO stopped production due

to the amount of returns, as I should not mind another in 3-4 months for a dual rig

Paul

forget that  I must learn to read.:)

GO...FLO, what a great idea, having been one of the customers that had to return the star 71

having this great idea put into practice will give people peace of mind,

Yes it is extra money, but worth every penny,

Having really liked the WO star 71, for its overall functionality, I have purchased another

that has been checked out by Es Reid, and should be delivered today  

Thanks FLO,

Hi Every one, I was lucky last year as I had just built the obsy,

and just purchased The Atik 383l and Efw 2 filter wheel so I could get into the dark

art of Narrow band imaging as well as rgb, and I was blessed with a couple of nights of

clear skies.

all HA pics taken with  Atik 383l and 7nm filter

with a WO zenith star 71 with 0.8 r/f with Eq6 pro

NGC 7822

ic 1805

ic 1396

sadr

taken with qhy8l and Ed 80 with 0.85 r/f

bubble

Ngc 2264  WO zenith star 71 with 0.8 r/f Lrgb

ic405

thanks for looking

Paul

UPDATE : Well what a journey it has been with this scope and its still not over

Hoping the Tilt adapter would more accurately get me to the quoted 68mm

as quoted on the TS website,

I can confirm its not 68mm ,  in fact still at the moment I can not actually tell you what it is

the sad thing is neither can TS optics, I shall explain.  

 Having the good fortune to of had good weather the past week or so to experiment with trying to

get the best out of this nice little scope with the help of another  SGL member who is in the same predicament as me

we have been in communication on nearly a daily basis trying to resolve where the optimum back focus is for the scope

should be reasonably easy, how wrong were we,

spending nearly all our the clear sky time on trying to get the best out of this scope, in fact I am begging to believe

that getting ok star shapes in the corners of even a smallish chip is near on impossible, yet On the TS website where

on the review of this scope there are two pictures, which you can not make very big to look at but none the less

the stars look quite fair, not distorted ,

after the first night some time last week I rigged it up so that I could use a variable adapter of which I have three

I started at 44mm from the tilt plate, ( bear in mind TS said it was 68mm ) and worked out in 1mm increment's taking 30 second

  subs in a reasonably star populated  part of the sky, , zooming in to all for corners on bin 1 subs checking , discarding the sub as stars

were very badly elongated, then coming out a another 1 mm refocusing taking another  sub and repeating,

Now before I bore you to tears, suffice to say, the best measurement I got and I went up to 96mm ,

pic at 96mm

Clearly 96mm is way to far back,

 one at 78mm

and one at 68 mm The Quoted back distance by TS using the tilt adapter.

as you can probably see the 78 from the tilt adapter is a little better than the 68 quoted, but still not brilliant,

or if you have the rotator ,( I have both  ) its about 56.5 mm about the same as the more common R / F out there around

the 55mm mark.

I purchased some fine tuning spacers from our loverly people at FLO, so I could have more options around the 54 to 57mm

after taking more subs with fine tuning, I found that the stars were not getting much better, here are some quick pics I took with the

imaging time I had left. at

4x 10 minute ha subs at 76mm

a quick mosaic

with the WO zenith star at half the cost and only 1/3rd of a f number slower below

with the new scope as best as I can get it so far

all told I have probably taken about 100 x 30 second exposures and  re - focused let the scope settle then redo,

The only reason I have been so patient with this scope is I like it and I desperately want it to work, but after 7 hours now

of trying I think I a going to give up soon,

Bernard from Modern Astronomy, Is helping me to try and resolve the issues, but when TS done even know there back focus

of the R/F that they have in one of there own scopes that speaks volume's to me, but more to the point they did not even offer to try and find out for me

, they just apologised for the inconvenienced caused, .

Im just glad I got mine from Modern Astronomy, Like FLO they help you no matter what, I feel for DaveS, the other SGL member that has had

his scope a few months but due to bad weather he has only now really being testing this scope out, and is struggling the same as me.

so be warned people, take this information and make your own mind up.

I will keep updating the review hopefully with better star shapes, but at the moment I am not convinced that will happen.

I can confirm  the light cone is flat as stated, (flat field) but is it a optically well correct cone of light ?

Update :

after getting the tilt adapter from TS, I could now for the first time work out accurately the 68mm

quoted for the back distance to within 1mm

having the rotator on which is longer than the tilt adapter Means I could just about reach

the optimum back focus stated, which is ok but I really would have liked to keep my LP filter

on but that has a m42 thread on it rather than the m48, at the moment my set up has a m48 to m42

adapter on it,

All is not lost as I can put the tilt adapter on which will give me another 25mm to play with, maybe a

off axis guider then the LP filter.

I have attached another photo with the more up to date measurements, going by what TS has quoted

for there 68mm back focus I am there +/ - 1mm,

people with OSC cameras will find it much easier to get the back focus, just take the measurement

from the beginning of the of the 14mm wide rotator part, (don't include the 8mm )  then from there you just need

your back focus distance for you chip, so say you back distance is 20mm you should

have 26 mm to add in your couplings.

which is also a bonus because this works out almost spot on for the Canon slr, most adapters for the camera to the scope are around 10 mm

thick I purchased the very thin 1mm  canon to m48 adapter form Bernard at Modern Astronomy, this allows you to screw the adapter

straight onto the m48 thread on the rotator for pretty much spot on 68mm .

The only verification that I have that these measurements are ok at the moment is I took some day light pics

with the canon attached , it is modified so it has a red hue to the photos, after close examination of the photos,

they do look sharp to the edge, not as good as a star test, but soon as a clear patch arrives I shall get some

decent tests done,

stay tuned for hopefully a image with reasonable stars in the corners soon  

Paul 

Hi Every one, I have been looking around for another scope for a while now and, I have to admit, I am always cautious of parting with my hard earned cash on any thing, I try and do my home work on what ever I purchase especially when it comes to Astro gear.
so after many hours of shall I or not this is the scope I picked, I am writing up a small review to show you what this little scope is all about  in case your were might be interested in it / or not.
 
The scope arrived from Bernard at Modern Astronomy just after the last bank holiday Monday.
The box itself felt very heavy for its size and was in good condition delivered by DHL.
after opening the first box I was presented with another box, then another then another until I could see the actual transport box the scope lives in, well packaged came to mind, which is a good thing.

Inside the Transport case the scope revealed itself at last, looking nice in its white and glossy black finishing's.
 
once out the wrappings it was place on top of the case so I could get a good look at it, checking for marks or any thing that should not be there, all was good, optics looked nice and clean all great so far.

Having had more basic scopes in the past, it was nice to have a rotator on the focus mechanism, which allowed to rotate the focus knobs on top so it cleared the fixing plate, which is very handy if like me you have quite a bit of weight hanging off the back of the focuser and have to push the scope further up in the saddle in the mount, or you just find it easer to have the focus Knobs on top, the rotator was very smooth and positive with a nicely knurled big knob to tighten.
The focuser is a 2.5 ich rack and pinion and  was very smooth, no lumpy of gritty bits here, when using the 10:1 focuser very smooth indeed, no effort required at all, as it should be.
winding the focuser out o the max I was nicely surprised by the amount of travel 88mm in all, Liking this scope allot so far.

At the end of the of the focus tube another rotator, which I was surprised about as nearly all pictures I had seen on this scope it had a tilt mechanism on the end not a rotator, that threw me a little, but after attaching  my normal imaging equipment to it a Atik 383L and Efw2 filter wheel and undoing the three retaining thumb screws a little it rotated a charm, very smooth, on the air of caution don't undo the screw to much , not that you have to, but where the screw go into the recess part it is not that deep so more than 5 turns on the thumb screws your Equipment will fall off.
Just inside, at the back of the rotator you have the Reducer / flattener which is fixed into the inner part of the draw tube, its screwed in for a good connection, all connections are screw in if you unscrew the rotator you will have a m68 thread the rotator and the tilt mech have a m48 thread which screw directly onto the m68.

The lens hood had a good amount of travel, and should stop stray light entering , and very smooth travel over the scope body,
a nice little feature is the Retaining nut on the hood, so once fully extended lock it up and it stays there, also it has a screw in metal cap on the end of the hood, which you ether love them or hate them, compared to a push on cover.

The only gripe so far and it is a very, very small one is the side of the focus knob with the 10:1 travel, the cover for it is so loose it will always fall off,
as I said small gripe.

Now to the fun part, a clear night on the night of delivery  (not a chance I hear you say ) well the gods were being kind and I did have a clear night,
 
Now the interesting part, what to set the back distance at well, you would think that would be the easy part really, go on the TS web site  and get the back focus distance in the information box,
well the information is there but for the tilt mechanism not the rotator which my scope had come with.
Easy I thought go on the web go on Google and find the information simple yes: No not really, information as yet on this scope is very far and few between at the moment ( hence the review ) and what info is out there its orientated mainly towards the tilt mech.
 
I have been in a private chat with a member on SGL who is in the same predicament as me and both of us have been going out when the slightest glimmer of a clear sky has been forecast and I have to admit over the past few days it has been off and on with high cloud with clear patches.
 
Both of us knew that spacing and focus would be quite critical on a reasonably fast frac with a 42mm flat field, how critical, I was about to find out after at least 20 attempts of getting it some where near good.
 
Having 4 other scopes that have Reducer / Flatteners in them I though this would be a breeze, all the Reducer / Flatteners I have are always around the 55 to 56mm back focus.
 
so with lots of trial and error around this bench mark I was getting results but not up to the standard this scope should deliver, In fact after 5 hours of trial and error I was getting a little concerned.

picture below of ic 1396 one of the many back focus tests, 5 x 10 minute ha

as you can see not good at the corners and sides at 100% , its not the scope at fault it me

But last night after re-evaluating my distance buy subtracting the differences between the tilt mech and the rotator I was getting closer, as it stands at the moment I am within 2 mm of optimum back focus, I need to get some 1mm and 0.5 mm shims to get it better.
the distance I am using at the moment is 58mm I need to loose about 1.5 - 2.0mm to get it better please see side view of picture, please note, this is an older picture the variable spacer is not in there now.

5 x 5 minute subs for lights and 1 x 5 each of rgb, due to cloud last night the test was cut shorts but stating to look promising, once I fine tune the Back focus.
I have the tilt mech arriving any day soon as the is slight tilt.

Pro's
small, compact
fast optics F4.4
well made
Nice options for framing and fine tuning with the tilt mech /or rotator
Great for wide field shots, FL 352mm
Comes with a very nice storage case
 
Con's
Very twitchy on back focus distance
10:1 focus knob cover way to loose.
 
I hope this small review will help you decide if this scope is worthy of your hard earned cash or not,
any questions please ask.

will update with more information and astro pics weather permitting

Paul

On ‎16‎/‎04‎/‎2016 at 10:35, cdh79 said:

sorry to revive this old thread, but i wondered if there are any guides yet?

I just recently got an AZ-Eq6 and had movement in RA and Dec, so that i could rock both axis a little bit back and forth..

 

I did read this thread multiple times and i also check out the guide at astro-baby for the eq6 for help.

The DEC movement i could get out by adjusting the two torx screws, however with RA seemed much more difficult.. It was either rocking, or there was binding. After loosening up the worm-gear (behind the black cover) a bit, it seemed to adjust a bit better, but I'm somehow still not really happy with it.

I need to wait for clear skies, so i can test how it's performing now, but i'm thinking of taking it apart for cleaning and then re-greasing and for this a write-up would come in pretty handy.

 

yes that would be handy having some sort of guide

There have been a few people saying they would but as of

yet I have not seen any thing,

Even a written one would do for the slightly less experienced of us

Just a thought have you adjusted the worm gears at all, as slacking them up

can resort in a smoother operation as sometimes just adjusting how far the worm

drive goes into the main shaft drive can make it bind on one side of the worm if that makes sense

ideally you want it in the middle ( the v in the worm ) It might be worth checking that its

mot binding

Hi Every one, I have been saving up for a filter wheel and filters to compliment the Atik 383L+ I got from Flo a few weeks back, having done a few Ha images with the camera I bit the bullet and ordered the Atik EFW2 Filter wheel and the Baader 2 inch LRGB filters,

Because of work commitments the only day I could wait in for the gear to arrive was Today (Thursday) so I left a message on the bottom of the order form on Flo's web site saying I would need it delivered to day, and sure enough it arrived today. The main box it came in was plenty strong enough and was well packed out with support material inside to protect the goods. what more can one say, first class service as usual.

The only thing that did not arrive was the clear skies to try the new gear out

Clear skies

Paul

Hi Every one, Having saved up for what seem's like years I finally bit the bullet and decided to have a go with a Mono chip.

Having used a modified Canon 1100d and the OCS Qh8yl camera for a while it was time to take it to the next step.

Having seen very good reviews about ATIK cameras I thought long and hard as to what Mono camera would suite me best with the Telescopes I have.

I finally after much pondering decided on the Atik 428ex.

Here comes the good part.

As soon as I hit the payment button, I knew I should have got the 383L (DONT ASK)

so in the morning I sent a email to FLO asking if I can change the order to the 383L+

To cut a long story short, By the end of the Day and a few Emails later Martin and Steve changed the order and I received it on the day I asked.

I found the Service to be quick and polite through the whole process,

I am now the proud owner of a Atik 383L+ and would like to thank First Light Optics for there extra effort in changing the order and Getting it out to me For the day I asked.

Thanks FLO.

Paul

Theres some great videos from this site on Pix insight http://www.harrysastroshed.com/ACDNR.html

must have watched some of these video several times enjoy.