Lamplighter05

Great analysis. Sampling science is fascinating. I'm now wondering what algorithms are used for 'dithering' - simple alt/az offsets will need a minimum delta to help avoid introducing these pixel boundary conditions. Presumably 'on sensor' pixel binning will mitigate, or having an oversampling sensor to glass setup?

It looks like it could be a 'rounding error' aka quantisation error in the stacking algo, with slight local variations causing a moiré effect with the data. It could be rotational calculations on partial pixel coverage as the data values are clipped or 'binned' across pixel boundaries. One way to try 'fixing' it would be to pre-scale the stacking images (prior to stacking) with a simple 2x linear interpolation - basically creating a artificial bin2 of the data. Then stack the result and finally scale the result back down by 0.5x.

Indeed, as I already had an TS APO 80mm triplet refractor and am very happy with the build of that, I was really happy to see, and conformed via your thread here this was my next option as opposed to a Mak. I'm looking to the autumn and winter for most of my telescope time ... dew and temperature plus CA my main concerns. Funnily, the CC I received has a red front tube baffle from the current RC as advertised. I did check I hadn't got some factory 'Frankenstein' hybrid - seems not - only cosmetic! Lol. My next 'investment' will be some Vixen to Losmandy mounting saddle, so I can use the broader rail on the mount side rather than the Vixen bar. I think your lid solution is a great addition. Separately did you tweak the collimation in the end, if so what method did you use? Cheers for any info.

I took the plunge and invested in one of these too - just arrived today. Very nice indeed. One thing I noticed about the front cover is that it 'locks' in place by twisting once placed into the OTA. Its about a 10 to 20 degree twist to 'lock' and 'unlock'.