Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The final piece to my new imaging rig!

Finally rounded up a William Optics 0.8x focal reducer / field flattener!  I originally went for the new Orion reducer/flattener as it's essentially the same as the actual Vixen reducer, however, after finding out the hard way and wasting a month of time I discovered it uses a new thread size and not the standard M42 T-threads.  With the spacing I have, this should bring me down to just around F/5.9 or better.  In comparison to my F/2.0 Hyperstar running 5 minute subs, my new rig requires 21 minute subs to equate to the approximate "depth" of detail.  With the reduction I should accomplish the same in under 13 minutes which is a tremendous improvement, and will have the approximate field of view as my Hyperstar, but in a much more compact and lighter setup.

No comments: