Sunk cost fallacy, time to pack it in?

[JeremyS]

What’s Mr Reid’s thoughts on the matter?

[pipnina]

10 hours ago, JeremyS said:

What’s Mr Reid’s thoughts on the matter?

I'm going to email him I think, but I wanted to try and get some more info first.

I just spun the camera around to see if it's on the front end or back end of the scope.

Here's the two files, when I look at matching stars in each corner, I see much the same error. So it seems to me that the corrector is probably fine. Either the scope's optics are just not all that, or Mr Reid's work has been undone in transit perhaps? Maybe there is an issue in my camera train causing this, though I'd know not what.

In have noticed the focuser barrel seems to wobble a tad, Not sure if that could cause all this or not...

LUM 180 degrees.fits LUM NO ROTATION.fits

 

These being the stars I paid most attention to: one image with the camera unrotated, other with the camera and corrector turned 180 degrees. Star shapes look the same to me, near enough. But in a full image the shape changes in each corner, with the corner opposite these stars being much tidier.

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by pipnina

[pipnina]

I think finally this is coming to a close!

This last month has had horrid weather and clearoutside has shown me nothing but red, unltil an island of green appeared at 00:00 last night! I had to run outside and set up so I could make use of it!

My setup routine by this point is well rehearsed so aside from me forgetting to polar align (again) I got everything set up and quickly saw that Mr Reid's work had survived the postage this time!

I feel a great sense of relief that all my work (now about 6 months worth) with this scope has begun to pay off...

All I think needs to be resolved now is a probable flattener upgrade, as the one I got from the previous owner seems better suited to smaller sensors (maybe 4/3 size)

I've looked at the riccardi m63 0.75x and the explore scientific 3" 0.7x and both seem promising but finding real world examples of their quality is hard! The market for third-party flatterers seems to have little middle ground between super-cheap and super-expensive. Most seem to be tailored for a specific scope.

Thank you all who have offered kind words and advice in this time!