Willam Optics Star 71 5 element Apo Astrograph

[gnomus]

6 minutes ago, swag72 said:

....I'm not sure I would change my scope requirements for example based on the fact that I could not be best served by a retailer of choice.... but it is certainly a consideration. 

At my stage (inexperienced beginner) I certainly would change my scope choice based on how much I trusted the dealer.  At one stage, it looked like I was going to be lumbered with ~ £3K of gear that would have been of no use to me whatsoever.  My lack of experience means that I don't have the same 'clout' that someone like yourself might have.  I am contemplating a longer F/L refractor (perhaps next year ..... oh it already is next year!!!) and, whilst I have been looking at various options, I keep coming back to WO because I know I won't get any nonsense from the supplier if I am not happy with it.    

[PhotoGav]

Thank you Gnomus. Argh, yes, I remember seeing that thread at the time. I am feeling even happier with my beautiful Star 71!

Interesting on the obsy too, I am in the early stages of planning an obsy and have been in touch with Home Observatory UK. They couldn't be more helpful. I have a feeling that I will have to start my own obsy thread though, as every day I think about it, I just have more and more questions.

Anyway, thread hi-jack over!

 

[Droogie 2001]

Finally solved the back focus issue. I found some M48 Baader Fine tuning rings which I stopped using along time ago. They are in fact 14mm and 28mm adapters.

Attached the 14mm between the OTA and CCD. Setup outside. Found perfect focus at 17.5mm.
I can also use the 28mm and will probably find focus at around 7mm. Ran out of time and too cold!

I did not receive a 35mm M48 adapter with my Moravian. Maybe you have to order it separately. Anyway thanks to all and special thanks to Andy UK and Buzz for kick starting some ideas for me to look for said adapters.

Just need to address the balancing issue and I'll be sorted at last...

Thanks all.

[AndyUK]

That's great to hear, Droogie - One down, one to go

[Pompey Monkey]

Finally I am happy with the Star 71!

I bought a barely used second hand one a few weeks ago and had a problem with a tilted field. In the end I bought a tilt adjuster and managed to correct this issue during this week. I suspect that is why the newer ones have an adjuster fitted as standard. I must extend my thanks to Ian King and William Optics for their kind help in this matter.

Then I was having a problem with focus: I was using the Bahtinov grabber tool in APT and was having the error jump all over the place and even when it reported that I was on focus for several consecutive images, the final result was most definitely not in focus  In the end, I tried using the mask and focusing by eye and, lo and behold, the result was almost spot on. I suspect this is something to do with the narrowband filters creating a line of dots rather than a smooth line and the software has problems with this. Anyhoo, that's another matter.

Here's a quick and dirty of IC443 and 444 from last night, before it disappeared behind the neighbour's tree. 4 X 1200s in Ha. I've seen slightly better stars on some Star 71 images, but mine are good enough that undersampling is becoming a bigger issue, at least with the fainter stars. In PNG format all you star peepers