Sky Watcher ED 80 first light

[Luis Campos]

Hi friends,

Just bought myself a birthday gift, a small ED 80 black diamond to use with the 350D for wide (ish) field imaging, hope to get a WO type II reducer/corrector soon to have a neat combo

After earing so many wonders about these little refractors i decided to give one of these a try, I'm very impressed with the optical quality, the star test is just wonderfull, and in Jupiter even with heavy turbulence the image is beatifull with a lot of detail (the red spot is easy). I made a couple avis with the DMK 21 on Jupiter and even with bad seeing in the final image the red spot is clearly resolved along with oval BA...i'm surprised with that!!!

Anyways...here goes the only image I got so far right here from my astro backyard, it's the double cluster in Perseus, it's only 4 frames of 10 min. each at 200 ISO with the TEC cooled 350D, there is no noise reduction aplied watsoever, just curves and levels and a bit of color boost on the stars, minimum processing, there's a slight crop on the image.

Can't wait to do some more serious testing under a better sky

http://www.flickr.co...in/photostream/

Best wishes,

Luís

[RAC]

Really nice. Awesome star colour. Low iso longer subs is SO the way for DSLR's ! My next effort will be ISO200, i did some tests and cannot see the downside.

[Luis Campos]

Cheers Rac,

Thanks

You're right, I've been doing some tests latelly with various ISO setings and doubling integration time with every ISO drop, made one @ ISO 400 / 300 sec. one @ 200 ISO / 600 sec. and one @ 100 ISO / 1200 sec.

The 400 ISO to 200 ISO drop shows a clear gain on noise reduction and star color, the colors / dynamic range is better @ 200 ISO and the amount of post processing can be kept to a minimum, this further helps to get a clean final image, my advice is if you have a permanet setup with very good polar alignment, go for very long subs at 200 ISO, about 100 ISO I dont see any advantage, so it's better to forget it.

In my case, as I dont have a permanet setup 400 ISO is still a good balance, but I'll give 200 ISO try on the next session under a dark sky

As you know, with the cooled camera you dont need a lot of subs to get a clean and good s/n ratio image, make your experiences

Cheers,

Luís

P.S. I dont understand why people still stick to high ISO :/

[sologuitarist61]

Great image Luis

[laser_jock99]

Good image liking the star colours.

[anthony]

Really like that - round and colourful stars. What a double cluster image is about!

[Luis Campos]

Thanks guys!

Let's see when I can image and make more serious tests with it....nothing but rain in here, yesterday we had a tornado in Algarve (south of Portugal) with some heavy damages, cars flying and all...can you believe that?? This weather is getting crazy!

Greets,

Luís

[ollypenrice]

More proof if any were needed that the ED80 is the greatest bargain in astronomy. The stars are perfect across almost all of the image, though there is a tiny bit of distortion in the lower left. This might well disappear if you fine tuned the chip distance, though I don't know how you'd do that with a DSLR. Whatever, that is a ridiculously good performance from a scope costing £349 (from FLO, who supply them as OTA only.)

You're going to enjoy this one, Luis.

Olly

[Darth Takahashi]

a ridiculously good performance from a scope costing £349 (from FLO, who supply them as OTA only.)

You're going to enjoy this one, Luis.

Olly

Excellent image, well done. Buying the scope second hand makes it an even better bargain!!! :grin: I just picked up an WO FD72 mint condition for only 250Euros!!! (Guide scope for the Tak's)

[Gina]

I think the FLO SW ED80s are excellent value - very pleased with mine

[Beardy Bob]

I see no reason why you can't design a camera that detects overspill from full wells/pixels and prevents stars from bloating that way. Then you can suck in as much light as possible at the highest ISO you like and get the best of all worlds!

Great shot too. I agree about the nice colours.

[Luis Campos]

Many thanks all,

Yes, indeed these are a true bargain, I got mine used from a fellow astronomer, this ota is just 10 months old and it was a very good deal

Just fine tunned the focuser, it was a bit too light and sensitive for my taste, grinded the rail base to make it flat and took the teflon sheet at the tension mechanism, is works for me now.

Now....if the rain just go away!!!!

Cheers,

Luís