DaveS

I'll put your name on it.

Which reminded me... I knew I had it somewhere... 1 Telrad Finder in box. No instructions (Went walkabout during the house move), £10

OK, I'll be sad to see this go, but I have a 130 triplet Apo on the way, so: 130P-DS with 14" ADM Vixen dovetail, finder and 28mm LER eyepiece (As supplied), no box £90 Baader MPCC coma corrector, with caps and box £75 Will bundle for £150, saving £15

In addition: 8" f/8 paraboloid + flat + single-arm holder. Originally Brunnings, re-worked and re-coated by David Hindes (I think) in the mid '80s. Not sure of the PV value, but 1/8 comes to mind. Needs re-coating but will give an image as-is. First person to make me a sensible offer gets it. Would probably make a nice Lunar / Planetary 'scope. Also chucking in a black Moonlight crayford for £50.

Ah, sorry to disapoint. OK, one Baader UHC-S still available.

OK, noted.

OK, I'm on Pitch 65. Just a note, I see from my sig (Dur...) that it's a UHC-S, hope that's still OK?

OK, I'll probably regret selling this lot but I need a clear-out ADM Dual Losmandy bar £90 Dual Vixen 11" bar £60 Hotech SCA FF £70 (Will try to find the instructions, but the spacing is 55mm). IDAS P2 LP filter, 2" £80 Baader UHC 2" £30 Astronomik CLS 2" £80 (Better than the IDAS if you have HP sodium LP) Baader NB Ha, SII, OIII, £50 each or £100 the set (Buy the Ha and SII, and I'll chuck in the OIII which may halo) Celestron Ultima Barlow 2x £20 I've set these as near as I can to half FLO list, hope that's not too much. Everything that came in a box will be in its box.

The sky's rubbish here, high cloud and contrails, hope you manage to get something Dave. No imaging, but running more PA routines. The images I've been getting have shown how rubbish the conditions are. Only just good enough for modeling.

Yes, I'll have to see how things hold up come winter. Assuming that is we actually *get* a winter and not another grey, mild, damp mess. I'm finding that having two monitors makes a big difference to the usability of the rig, as windows aren't so constricted or overlapping each other. Even when I no longer have to have the manuals open, there's still CduC, Autoslew, Sequence and Maxim DL, with the camera control sub-window of Maxim also open.

This was from last night taken just before it got properly dark TV has manuals, CduC and Maxim, the laptop has Autoslew and Sequence.

Total cloud here too.

Not the whole set up, but my game-pad covered in frost in Dec '14. Combination of flash and the red desk lamp. Just found another photo from the previous October

The BF of the 11" Edge HD with reducer is different. You may get away with a very slim OAG and a filter drawer. I think they are 19mm and 15mm respectively from TS. I also have a horrible feeling that even an 8" Edge HD on an HEQ5 might be pushing it a bit. Edit: Here's the FLO page for the 8" reducer https://www.firstlightoptics.com/edge-hd-series/celestron-reducer-lens-7x-edgehd-800.html It specifically says DSLRs are problematic with that particular 'scope / reducer combination.

I'm thinking vibration mainly. From your sketch it looks like you've 4 studs from the pier to an intermediate plate then another 3 or 4 studs to the top plate, all of which can vibrate, and the intermediate plate can flex as well. Can you at least cut out the intermediate plate and bolt the pier to to the pier with the shortest length of stud you can get away with?

Um.....why all the studs between the pier and the plate? You do *not* have to level it and they are a point of weakness.

Well the Taks are designed as a piece, a Petzval quadruplet. All these six element astrographs are built from existing apo triplets with a supposedly matched three element reducer / flattener built into the focuser. Therefore like any other 'scope with a reducer / flattener you have to get the spacing right. It's just a pity that TS don't seem to know the correct value and release the thing with optics that aren't square or even possibly centered.

*sniffs* Dagenham, 'cos it's beyond Barking. Sorry, (West) Londoners' joke.

There are bench tests for optical alignment, but they're a bit specialised, Zygo interferometers etc. The optical elements can be parallel to each other, but if they're not centered then the stars will not be round. And if the elements are not correctly spaced there certainly will be errors, quite severe ones.

That would be money well spent in my opinion. Having had my fingers burned over this 'scope I'm more wary of buying in the future. I note the Altair Wave series of 'scopes come with a test report so you do at least know what you're getting. Debating with myself whether to see if I can send it off to Es Reid to find out exactly what's going on.

No Olly, I wouldn't shoot you down in flames, I think TS (Or whoever makes these things) has been a bit optimistic in pushing it to f/4.4 when an even 5.0 would have saved a lot of problems. They have another couple of these 3+3 designs working at 5.1, and 5.0. My Megrez 90 with 0.8 reducer reaches f/5.3and gives a much better image than this. The problems WO had with their original 71mm f/4.9 gives weight to your argument. I think my next 'scope will likely be a 130 f/7 Triplet Apo, with a flattener and a 0.79 or possibly 0.75 (Riccardi) reducer. Meanwhile I need to gather more evidence of the defects in my example before emailing TS to seek a resolution. Blast these cloudy nights.

I did have an email from TS just after I'd bought it as the outer box said 80mm f/6 and I wanted clarification. Apparently it starts life as a bog-standard 80mm f/6 then has a reducer fitted to bring it down to f/4.4. I've put this on the back-burner until I get longer dark as I'm fed up with bashing my head against this thing (Or even the wall) at stupid o/c. I'm back to using the Meg 90 and reducer.

Good review Paul. As the other member here with one of these I can confirm everything Paul has written. This thing is *very* sensitive to spacing, and you'll need that fine focus knob as you can go through focus and out the other side very easily. ATM I'm working on 84mm from the m68 thread and leaving out the rotator, but I have tilt in my Trius that hadn't been a problem before but is giving problems now.

Just a quick snap. In the background my Megrez 90 f/6.9, in the foreground my new 80mm f/4.4 six-element astrograph.

A Rosette from the beginning of 2015 2 hours each of H-alpha and [NII] plus 4 hours of the much weaker [OIII] signal, mapped Hydrogen to red, Nitrogen to green and Oxygen to blue, all in 600 sec subs with the Megrez 90 and 0.8 focal reducer / flattener through 3 nm Astrodons. Guiding with PHD2, capture and post in Astro Art 5