First Light SW Quattro + ASA Reducer

[SamAndrew]

Hi guys, so I went a bit crazy last summer and bought an ASA reducer plus a Baader steeltrack to go with my Quattro 10S, however a combination of a change at work plus the terrible weather we had for the second half of last year, has meant I've been working abroad a lot and spent the only clear nights I've had doing visual astromoy, so I've only just got around to testing the new kit !!!

In that time the PC i was using in the observatory died, so I've had to reinstall everything on my laptop leading to a lot of prime time wasted getting it all working on Saturday

I managed to get 20 minutes of exposures on M42 which I'm sharing with you here,

Unfortunatly the sky got all murky meaning the rest of the subs were no good

I'm very happy with this considering how rusty I am, and there's plenty to fine tune, so I hope I can sort the corners out.

Not quite sure how to post the photo in a larger size, I think you can click the photo to go through to the larger one on flickr, or try this url:

http://www.flickr.co...tos/8452142428/

[Gina]

Very nice

[Daniel-K]

what does that reducer take the f ration down to? with he corners it may be spacing

[SamAndrew]

The reducer is x0.73, so It's now at about F3

I'm using a 7.5mm spacer, but I'm not too sure how to fine tune this, as I've only seen spacers in 2.5mm increments, I might have to buy a 10mm one and cut a few mm off, try it, and then cut a few more off.

[laser_jock99]

Nice image, those reducers are a real special bit of kit if you can get the fine tuning right (Colimation & CCD distance). Working at F2.9 can give you a real speed advantage. I'm still working on the fine tune with mine but I can use it with two scopes, a 12" F4 and an 8" F4. You might find that correction doesn't quite reach the edge of a DSLR CCD as the corrected circle is 'only' 20mm across. But when I looked at the price of the 3" version I nearly fell of my chair!

[Daniel-K]

id be intrested to compare a full frame shot with mine as i have the SW coma corrector and i get round stars to the corners and its suppose to reduce the f4 to 3.6

[SamAndrew]

Nice image, those reducers are a real special bit of kit if you can get the fine tuning right (Colimation & CCD distance). Working at F2.9 can give you a real speed advantage. I'm still working on the fine tune with mine but I can use it with two scopes, a 12" F4 and an 8" F4. You might find that correction doesn't quite reach the edge of a DSLR CCD as the corrected circle is 'only' 20mm across. But when I looked at the price of the 3" version I nearly fell of my chair!

An 8" and 12" is a nice combination; I would like to get a 6" f4 scope to use with the reducer as well, so i'll have a nice choice of focal lengths to image at, and I'd also eventually like to upgrade to a CCD which will have a smaller chip which should be fully corrected.

[SamAndrew]

id be intrested to compare a full frame shot with mine as i have the SW coma corrector and i get round stars to the corners and its suppose to reduce the f4 to 3.6

Interesting, I didn't realise SW did a 0.9x coma corrector, is this a recent addition ? or has it always been a 0.9x reducer which maybe wasn't advertised as a reducer.

I see we've both got 450Ds, can you share a full frame photo using the 0.9x coma corector? I'll have to check my individual subs when I get home, but I think I'm slightly out of focus.

[badgerchap]

An 8" and 12" is a nice combination; I would like to get a 6" f4 scope to use with the reducer as well, so i'll have a nice choice of focal lengths to image at, and I'd also eventually like to upgrade to a CCD which will have a smaller chip which should be fully corrected.

I have a 6" f4 - it's taking a lot of getting to grips with, though that's probably my inexperience showing. The collimation is really finicky, unlike my 8" f6 dob. It is nice to have the relative speed though over my frac which is about f6.2. Exposures seem to take an age with that lil baby lol

[ST Astro]

I am interested in what you had to do to the quattro to get the 0.73x reducer to work, I have just purchased an ASA Reducer for my 8" Quattro but I cannot seem to get the focuser to travel in far enough to achieve focus, you say you got a Steeltrack, is this focuser shorter than the Stock Skywatcher one?

Regards

Simon