Ikharus 102mm ED Unboxing

[Astro_Baby]

Its a really nice looking bit of kit for sure - the focuser looks like the business as well.

[kris h]

Looks awesome cant wait to hear how you get on with it

[Albireo380]

Nice looking piece of kit. Can't wait to see how it performs, as I am in the market for an imaging 'scope that I can also use for observing.

Tom

[ribuck]

I managed to capture a few 20 secs luminous subs of an open cluster, but the seeing was really bad with a lot of high level whispy cloud so i couldn't achieve good focus and the best FHWM i could achieve was 2.7

I'll give it another try tomorrow night and see if i can get any better. If anyone can give me any pointers at good methods of doing star test's please let me know as i'm just guessing at what i should be doing.

Rich.

[Coco]

looks just like a Revelation / Avian scope / Long Perng Taiwan ... I loved my Rev 100/6

White too... very trendy

[ribuck]

It's basically the Williams Optics Megrez 102mm / Orion optics 102mm but with a beefy focuser. I've still got really bad weather, so desperately waiting to get a chance to use it.

Rogeilo from spain bought one, and managed to get a quick test of M42 with his Cannon DSLR. Maybe he will post it.

Rogeilo, Do you want to post you M42 test ?

Rich.

[Tim]

Rich, you can either find a rich star field with a good mix of stars (mag and colour), or choose a reasonable star like Polaris (not too bright) and focus it dead central in the fov. Photograph it. Then move the star to each corner of the frame and photograph it in each point using the same settings. best to go for short exposures.

This exercise will demonstrate the way the optics deal with star shape and colour both centrally, where it should be better (smaller dot size) and at the extremes of the view. I usually do the same thing with the stars half way to the edge as well, especially in a newt, because it helps to verify that the optical path is central to the camera.

HTH a bit

[ribuck]

Hey TJ,

I'm still cloud locked, but were due more snow this week so not looking good for me.

A guy in spain called Rogeilo bought one of the Ikharus 102mm and has been lucky enough capture a test image and has given his permission for me to post the image on his behalf.

Looking at the image it seems to have a pretty good flat field at the edges, keeping in mind that it was using an unmodified camera, i.e. no pollution filter.

Details of image are as follows :

humidity:80%

Temp:7 ºC

DLSR: Canon 500D no modification

ISO: 800

Light: 20 Subs @ 155 secs

Dark: 2 subs @ 155 secs

Bias: 15 Subs

Processing: Nebulosity, PS 3

Telescope: Ikharus 102 ED

Mount: S/W NEQ6

Place: Castillo de las Guardas (Seville)

Full size Image here --------------------> http://www.astrosky.co.uk/images/general/m42_red.jpg

[Maltese Falcon]

I agree there must be some Hi tech lube out there, but what?

Norton's 17th ed. recommends white petroleum jelly, aka. Vaseline as a creep free lube for stiff drawtubes etc.

Not exactly state of the art, but safer than axle grease.

Hi guys just read this thread. Have any of you thought about using a soft pencil led as lube? Just run a B4 pencil around the thread and you should find that this will give you all the lube you need. Its almost pure graphite don't go mad with it just run the pencil round two or three times you will be pleasently suprised

[sunoficarus]

Any more news on this scope?

[ribuck]

Hi Sunoficarus,

Just waiting for clear sky. The only clearnight i've had since i got it was new years eve and i had other plans, which is blumming typical....lol.

I tried a few short subs lastnight but again cloudy, with really bad seeing so couldn't achieve good focus or guiding but i'll process them anyway and post at some point over the weekend.

Rich.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Looks like a really great scope, in fact, only a really good scope would lead to such a delay in proper first light

[sunoficarus]

Hi Sunoficarus,

Just waiting for clear sky. The only clearnight i've had since i got it was new years eve and i had other plans, which is blumming typical....lol.

I tried a few short subs lastnight but again cloudy, with really bad seeing so couldn't achieve good focus or guiding but i'll process them anyway and post at some point over the weekend.

Rich.

Hi Rich,

Yes, the weather has been rather shocking the last month! There's a nice old classic Carton refractor I;ve recently bought off fleabay in my shed waiting to come out and play.

Looking forward to the pics, this scope looks like it may tick all my boxes as old Vixen 102 ED's are effectively unobtanium now.

[ribuck]

Hi all,

I finally got first light with my shiny new Ikharus after 2 months of waiting for the sky to clear. I have to say i love the Ikharus, it's first light was very pleasing and visually the views were very crisp and contrasty with no noticible false colour or abberations, so it feels like a very well corrected scope for a doublet.

I decided to push my luck and try my first ever attempt at imaging, which i was fairly happy with as the image was ok for a first ever image, so means i'm heading in the right direction and have a starting point to work from.

Please be gentle as this was my first ever attempt and i only got 30 mins of clear sky so could only capture a few lum subs, but forgot to do the matching flats, so there's no flats applied, so the stars aren't perfect but the edge to edge perfomance seems very good anyway giving a nice flat field.

Please note that the image doesn't have much detail in it due to the short imaging window of 30 mins, so the subs were as follows (5 x 10secs Lum) + (5 x 60ses Lum)

Full Size Image Here

Final thoughts, it's a solid built scope, very light weight with a hefty solid focuser, and for the bargain price you get the exact same scope as the williams optics 102mm megrez but with a super heavy duty focuser and a free matched field flattener which seems to give very good performance edge to edge even though i didn't even have a flat field applied to the image and optics seem well corrected too, so I can't really fault this scope for especially for entry level budget price tag.

I can't praise this scope enough and would highly recommend one anyone else.

Rich.

[ollypenrice]

kerannng!!!!

Excuse me, your first image? Low bow, sweeps floor with doffed hat. Well done Sir, that is a sensational success!

There is strong evidence here to contradict the view that you have a great telescope for the money. Not a bit of it, you simply have a great telescope. The scope has a delivered defect free clean field and controlled bright regions very well indeed. You do have a very, very slight guiding error by the look of it but since it is the same across the image the optics are presumably spot on.

I think you will have a lot of people reaching for their cheque books. Isn't it great that you can now buy a fine four inch apo for a price like this? I gave first light to a slightler larger budget apo myself last night and that too looks as if it is going to be more than just good. Times are changing.

This is a great tutorial if you fancy getting clever with M42:

Compositing 2 Different Exposures via Layer Masks

I'd be very surprised if there were not much, much more data in your ten second run than shows here. You should resolve the Trapezium with those subs. Try a much shorter stretch just for the brightest part.

Encore!

Olly

[ashworthacca]

All minor correction, the flattener has no reduction to it, I had assumed it was 0.8x but it's not so scope is still F7, which is still fine.

Rich.

Hi Rich, on Ian Kings website the blurb says

In addition we also have a matched field flattener and 0.8x Reducer for this instrument that reduces the focal ration to F5.6.

Did this scope originally come with a flattener only?

Looks a lovely scope and I'm very very tempted.

[ribuck]

Hi Olly, Thanks for the kind words. I'm just glad that it's turned out to be a superb scope and very well matched to my ccd. I took a bit of a leap of faith, as a few months back when i bought it, very little was known about it, and there weren't any reviews.

I love the solid feel of the scope, and the 2 things that have amazed me the most have been the amazingly silky smooth solid 3" focuser which feels like you could hang an elephant of it.

The second thing that amazed me was the quality of the optics and the matched field flattener. For the price i paid i wasn't expecting it to be brilliant, but i've been really impressed with the excellent colour correction and a very good flat field.

I'm now looking forward to getting some clear sky, so i can really start enjoying the hobby again.

[Coco]

Looks like the Revelation/longperng variety , should be a good scope, my Rev 600/6 ED was a great scope when used with a Skywatcher flattener Reducers/Flatteners - Skywatcher Field Flattener

[ribuck]

Hi Martin,

There was initially some confusion about this scope as Ian king was adament that the flattener did not have any reduction, which was going against everything i was seeing when pinpoint was analyzing the images, as it kept showing the focal length at around 560mm, so i was convinced it did have some reduction.

Early in the thread Ian does say that it doesn't have any reduction, but It looks like Ian King has updated his website to agree with my findings.

So essentially it just about makes it fall into the category of an Astrograph for an amazing price.

p.s. The flattener / reducer is a single unit, and seems to perform much better than my skywatcher that tried, probably becuase it's ones that comes with the scope it matched to the optics.

Rich.

[ashworthacca]

Excellent, thanks for that Rich.....looks like it will be a new addition for me very shortly.

[ribuck]

Hi Martin,

Well if we get a clear weekend, i'll be doing some imaging that's for sure, so hopefully i'll have some better results soon.

Rich.

[ashworthacca]

Hi Martin,

Well if we get a clear weekend, i'll be doing some imaging that's for sure, so hopefully i'll have some better results soon.

Rich.

Good luck......Met Office are reporting a very sunny day and clear skies here tomorrow so hopefully the weather will change for the better for all of us.

[ashworthacca]

Rich, I'd be interested to know how this performs visually as well if you ever get a chance to try it out.

Many thanks.

[ribuck]

Hi Martin,

The colour correction seems very good and it provides some very nice crisp and contrasty images, but i've only tried on the moon. I'll try to capture a movie with a web cam at some point and this will give you an idea of the visual side of things.

Rich.

[ashworthacca]

Hi Martin,

The colour correction seems very good and it provides some very nice crisp and contrasty images, but i've only tried on the moon. I'll try to capture a movie with a web cam at some point and this will give you an idea of the visual side of things.

Rich.

Thanks again Rich, looking forward to your further comments.