CraigT82

That’s a real beauty Mike, what a superb tool that big frac is… is there really that little CA on the limb or do you process it out? The colour for me is spot on, this looks so much more ‘lifelike’ to me than mono images.

I have a StellaLyra 30mm UFF waiting for me when I get home (currently on a cruise 🚢 ). Really looking forward are to trying it out in both 102ed frac and the 12” f/5 newt. I’m sorely tempted to add an ST80 to the fold after reading through this thread for the first time, as I could probably piggyback it onto the 102ed to ride on the AZEQ6, or just on a photo pod on its own. Heck at over 5 degrees I could probably just hold it up to my eye like a giant monocular!

Looking good, I wouldn’t worry about trying to dampen the pier from your footsteps, just don’t go near it once you’ve started the imaging run, or pause the run if you do need to go near it. Some longer cables to get the laptop a bit further from the mount will be good.

As long as there is no serious resistance when screwing it on I’d probably just run a regular pencil over the threads, get some graphite on there to lubricate.

Sounds like a dream! Nice work

That looks really good, though this method is a rough collimation, accurate collimation needs an in-focus star image to check the brightness distribution of the diffraction ring: Should be evenly bright all the way around. Ideally not on an artificial star either as there could be mirror/focuser movement when you then angle the scope upwards from horizontal.

Nice idea with the sliding weight and bracket, and you’ve got the perfect wallpaper for checking eyepiece distortion!

The skywatcher auto focuser is a great bit of kit for the price and I use them for visual observing on my big scope (moonlite focuser) it totally eliminates any focussing wobble at all you just stand/sit there looking through the EP with the handset (9v batt) in your hand controlling the focus. You can fit it with a thumb screw instead of a grub screw so that you can quickly decouple the motor shaft from the focuser shaft and have proper manual control if you wish. Whilst not technically computer controllable you can replace the supplied handset cable with a much longer one for more ‘remote’ control, or even get the 4tronix wireless remote controller for it. I’ve e had the lakeside kit and it was great, worked faultlessly although the brackets for both focusers I used it on weren’t straightforward to fit to the focusers (Moonlite CR2 and Baader Diamond Steeltrack). Motorised focusing (not necessarily computer controlled) is totally worth the money for an imaging rig in my opinion, and makes a shaky mount with big or long scopes much more of a pleasure to use for visual.

Baader T2 Zeiss BBHS prism + 2” T2 clicklock, and StellaLyra 3mm LER (55deg) EP. Not pictured is Baader Sky surfer RDF that arrived today too. All for the Starfield 102. Just waiting on the StellaLyra 30mm UFF to round off this latest period of self-indulgent and slightly reckless spending 😬😂

Here….

With this scope there is a good 80mm ish of focus drawtube showing when used with the 1.25” diagonal (see my pic in first post) so there a lot of inwards travel capacity. Can’t speak for other fracs though.

The Tak prism does not play well at all with the Nirvana 4mm, when fully inserted and fully tightened it wobbles around as the Tak collar is not gripping anything due to the tapered nosepiece on the EP. Going to return it and get a Baader T2 Zeiss prism - which will cost more than I paid for the scope in actual fact but I think it deserves it.

Yes the clamp on mine was hard to turn and often I unscrewed the entire adaptor from the drawtube when I tried to undo the clamp. I took it off the scope and sat turning it back and forth repeatedly for a few minutes which loosened it up to the point where it’s actually usable and works fine now - there is grease in there and turning it back and forth repeated must have helped distribute it around and thin it out a bit.

Will be adding one to the basket in the spring. Looking forward to a bit of white light without having to faff about with a solar film on the front! The grab and go aspect is really suiting me at the minute. That’s a good point Mike, like all scopes it really deserves a dark sky. Might have to think about a good mid length eyepeiece soon. I had another quick session last night whilst the slim crescent moon was still low in the western sky. I enjoyed watching a couple of isolated sunlit peaks off the sharp point of the cusp fade into darkness (rubbish phone pic below-the sight through the EP was much better!) Had a another good look at mars too and in addition to the dark albedo markings I observed yesterday in the northern and southern hemispheres, I could see a much lighter patch of terrain just coming into view in the southern hemisphere on the limb, which doesn’t really tally with anything on the maps that I can see so could have been a dust storm? Will have a trawl through others Mars images that I can find from last night to confirm or not. EDIT found a tweet from Martin Lewis (@SkyInspector) luckily the first placed I looked as I know Martin is a prolific imager and wouldn’t miss a clear night! It shows the light patch well. It’s on the terminator - not limb - and it’s at the lower left in this video screen grab. Certainly looks like the yellowish sandy colour for a dust storm.

Congrats! I just got my first apo too and I'm loving it so far, though only used it just the once for a quick session last night in fairly good seeing, but hope to get out again tonight as sky is currently clear.

No as Adam says it can change as the scope moves, gravity is acting on everything in the focuser which is in a constant direction and so the effect would change as the rig moves around the sky. Normally seen to change most after meridian flip though so probably not what you’re suffering from. Something seems to be moving over time though and as it’s a frac this is most likely to be something in the focuser… Cable drag maybe? Or could it be dew slowly forming on the objective from one side to the other (or top to bottom?)

Yes I’d love to get it out to a really dark sky and see how it performs on the faint fuzzies, but to be honest I’ve never been a fuzzyophile. I might see if I can find used UHC and O3 filters though as never tried them. Binoviewers sound great and I’d love to use them but I only have sight in one eye so I have to make do with regular pirate viewing.

Are you sure about this? Where was the scope pointing during this run? Rising or falling? This looks like focuser sag to me, although quite severe for only 50 mins elapsed time .

Since bringing home my new-to-me Starfield 102mm F/7 ED refractor I’ve been frustrated in getting first light by either dad duties or just plain old cloud. Tonight everything line up though and I managed a good 30 odd mins with the new frac and I must say this little pea shooter has really impressed me! Having been a died in the wool Newtonian fan for years I think this pretty little scope is swaying me away from shaving mirrors: Well for some visual work at least. Started off with Jupiter as nice and easy to line up the finder. In goes my also new 4mm Nirvana and I’m treated to some lovely pin point Galilean moons and the equatorial belts with GRS immediately clear smack in the middle. Observing a little longer and I can start to make out a bit more detail to the north and south of the main bands but not a lot. I didn’t linger here as it was already quite low and with some clear atmospheric dispersion present. Had a real fright when I first looked through the Nirvana to see the most horrendous scatter before I realised that I was breathing on the eye lens when I looked through the finder 🙄. Slight adjustment to the finder rotation and and gentle dab of the lens with my wondercloth and away we go again. Over to Betelgeuse to have a look at the stellar image, pop in the Baader 6mm ortho and Q 2.25 barlow for x268 and WOW! I’ve never seen so many diffraction rings! And with a perfect pin point airy disk cradled in the centre. Seeing pretty decent then. Beautiful twinkling orange colour too. Must admit I spent longer looking at this one star than I think I’ve ever done before. Totally forgot to look at the out of focus images diffraction patterns. Quick look at M42 with the 30mm Vixen NPL, transparency seems good but the view is bit disappointing… it’s nice but not 12” aperture nice. Not what I bought the frac for though so onwards and upwards (literally!) With the NPL still in I take a quick tour up through the Hayades and onto the Pleiades. Lovely! The stars are perfectly set in their black velvet background, can almost believe I can see some nebulosity around Alcyone but I think it’s just moisture in the air, maybe the eye lens is fogging a little again. Just about fit the cluster in the FoV but would be nice to have a bit more context. *Off to FLO to look at big 2” EPs*. Time for the main event: Mars. In goes the 4mm Nirvana for x178 and almost immediately - well… after figuring out how to actually look through the EP with it so close to the ground, *cue the addition of a pillar extension to my FLO trolley* - I’m met with large dark albedo features covering most of the lower half (Southern Hemisphere? No idea what the image orientation is with this thing!), and with a little more observing smaller dark markings at the 10 o’clock position in the upper half. Also present is some whitish brightening at the top (Cloud? Checking an online Mars map I believe the lower half dark features were the Aurora Sinus region, and the upper one was the Lacus Indus region). I just let the planet drift through the field and it is impressively sharp all the way to the edges. Nice eyepiece this. Crank it up a notch with the 6mm BCO and Q barlow and the detail is all still there but larger and still sharp with a very well defined limb, not mushy at all. Spend about 10 mins nudging and observing quietly and just start thinking about putting the 4mm in the barlow for x400 but I start to see the tell tale signs of the objective dewing up and I decide to head back indoors instead to let the scope dry off. Well I must say I thoroughly enjoyed that session and of the few refractors I’ve had before, this is the first one that I’ve looked through and come away from happy and satisfied. There’s no way I’m going to drag the 300p and AZ-EQ6 out for a 30 min session - which with my other commitments that’s mostly all the time I get nowadays - so this little frac is going to step in a fill that void perfectly and drag me back to visual observing that I’ve missed out on for a couple of years whilst I focused on imaging. Very happy chap right here

Exciting times Magnus 😁. What focuser option did you go for? Do you plan on using it side by side with one of the newts on the AZEQ6? Suppose that might be a bit awkward with one ep at the back and one at the front! I must say that whacking your name on the AP waiting list as soon as you get into the hobby is rather a bold move 😂

Sounds like the PA is way off?

Suck. Draws an undisturbed flow of air down the tube which washes over the face of the primary removing the boundary layer, also sucks the micro boundary layer off the secondary. Fan isn’t for cooling the mirror in my opinion, more for managing the air in the tube - trying to avoid temperature deltas.

Yeah as above… if you live in the city with very light polluted skies I’d go mono with barrow band filters. You could just start off with Ha to begin with then add filter wheel and other bands as you go

It does, the OD of the parallizer has a specific shape (not round) that ensures parallelism between accessory and focuser drawtube. IIRC the instructions say that the thumbscrew of the focuser should be located opposite to the thumbscrew of the paralliser for it to work optimally.

The whole point of the HG parallizer is to ensure that the accessory is parallel with the focuser drawtube.