First Light - TS APO 115mm

[Thalestris24]

So I woke up at 04:30 this morning (as you do) and could see a star through the window! Jumped up, grabbed a coffee and got myself together. Then opened the living room window and powered up! I got the new scope from TS on 26 Jan but, as expected the weather has been pretty awful. Anyway, in the meantime I had to sort out a guide scope and get the scope balanced on the AVX etc. At the moment I just have my full-spectrum 1100d attached but hope to get my cooled mono 550d back in the next week or so.

Here's a pic:

 

It seems to me a lovely scope and well engineered. Focussing is very smooth. A downside, perhaps, is the time it takes to temperature stabilise and the focus changes slightly with the temperature. The scope is at room temperature but as soon as I open the window, the cold air floods in! There was a frost this morning... It probably won't be so bad when it's not so cold outside - hopefully.

Anyway, by the time I'd got stable focus, calibrated PHD2 and drift aligned in alt., there wasn't much imaging time left before it got too light. Still I grabbed 9 x 120s of C37 (Vulpeculae Cluster). It's a bit noisy and I always get very red stars with the fs 1100d. I have a cls-ccd lp clip filter fitted and it doesn't cut-off until about 690nm and the camera is pretty sensitive in that part of the spectrum. Unfortunately, if I try and reduce the red in curves then lots of stars completely disappear! Hmm... I stacked the lights with darks, biases and flats in dss followed by minimal processing. Oh, I have the 0.79 reducer attached so the fr is about f5.5.

 

At least I've tried the scope out and I'm quite pleased with it

Louise

[xtreemchaos]

that's a mighty fine scope, well done, from charl who is a indoor imager too.  clear skys.

[RayD]

Very nice Louise and congratulations on the scope (I assume this is the one with the delivery woes?).

I just got the TS80 Triplet and as you say they seem extremely well built, so it should give you lots of great service.

[Thalestris24]

2 minutes ago, RayD said:

Very nice Louise and congratulations on the scope (I assume this is the one with the delivery woes?).

I just got the TS80 Triplet and as you say they seem extremely well built, so it should give you lots of great service.

It certainly is! I have the 80mm triplet too. They are very nice scopes. I don't know who actually makes them but they are well engineered and optically excellent. TS say they check them (the 115mm, at least) before shipping them. Well over packaged too - box in a bigger box full of polystyrene peanuts!

Louise

[RayD]

8 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

It certainly is! I have the 80mm triplet too. They are very nice scopes. I don't know who actually makes them but they are well engineered and optically excellent. TS say they check them (the 115mm, at least) before shipping them. Well over packaged too - box in a bigger box full of polystyrene peanuts!

Louise

The focuser looks identical to the WO one, but no, I have no idea who makes them, but absolutely no complaints from me.

I'm still finding an occasional peanut, things go everywhere!!

Fingers crossed for some better skies soon and look forward to seeing some more images.

[MattJenko]

I picked up a second hand, but basically immaculate, Altair 115, which I assume is the same scope really, and am equally impressed. A really good allrounder too. That one does look lovely in its all white on the all dark mount.

[Thalestris24]

3 hours ago, MattJenko said:

I picked up a second hand, but basically immaculate, Altair 115, which I assume is the same scope really, and am equally impressed. A really good allrounder too. That one does look lovely in its all white on the all dark mount.

Hi Matt

Alas, I've not even had a second light yet owing to the weather  Hopefully, the scope will perform well when I do eventually get an imaging opportunity! I think I'll take out the cls-ccd and/or use a different camera next time

Louise