Which 6.3 SCT Reducer

[Earl]

I see there are few options are these all just badged?

[Mr Spock]

They all look similar. There's a suggestion that the Antares offers more contrast but at a lower price.

[E621Keith]

I read somewhere the Meade, Celestron and Antares reducer all came from the same factory.

Then there is the Optec NextGen reducer which has different design.

[great_bear]

I read somewhere the Meade, Celestron and Antares reducer all came from the same factory.

The Scopes 'n' Skies one even has "Series 4000" printed on the side in Meade's trademark font! and - in SnS own words - "Even the plastic bolt-bottle has had the logo rubbed off (you can still see it - just)"

[Ransu]

I have Celestron 6.3 and baader alangeeII reducers, both of them are quite bad for photographical use with DSRL, but ok for visual.

For smaller chip CCD they are better.

AlangeeII was great dissapointment, giving comet tail stars near corners. Some kind of internal reflections i suppose?

I made photographic test with DSRL (Canon 1000D) little time ago and tested my scopes C8, Equinox 120, WO ZSII, Astro-Professional 66/400 with following reducers and flatteners: TS Flat, TS Koma Corrector for Newtonian, Celestron 0.63, AlangeeII

Test have quite many images, you can find them from here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106884738215780458002/Reducerivertailu#5666615948803940722

Test object is M29 in Cygnus.

Here is sample with C8 and Celestron 6.3 reducer

I have planned to continue this test with TSFlat, refractor reducers and comacorrector with C8. Also it still miss 250 f/5 Newton and Televue TRF-2008 and SkyWatcher 0.85 reducers with all scopes

TS seems to have one SCT 0.8 reducer, but i don't about quality.

My C8 from 1999 seems to be very difficult to get nice and flat image field. 9.25 may be different, i think it's different optically.

[great_bear]

AlangeeII was great dissapointment, giving comet tail stars near corners. Some kind of internal reflections i suppose?

Astigmatism probably.

[afm038]

Hi all,

I look with great interest at the image above and see that some of the brighter stars in the center have small flare like defects coming from them whilst others next to them look nice and round. These flares all point in the same direction and are not radially away from the center.

I have a similar issue where 1 or 2 of the stars in my images (usually the brighter ones) have these type of flare distortions. On each image they always point in the same direction (not radially away from the center) whilst all the rest of the stars are round and focused - note that I am not using a focal reducer of any sort and I'm imaging through a SCT at F8.

Does anyone have a explanation as to what or how this type of distortion is being formed ?

Many thanks, Andy