New AP 17" astrograph

[Slawomir]

Have been doing some window shopping...

https://youtu.be/n13WmIdySd8

[jwoody]

Yeah, but would it be big enough......:P
A man can dream I suppose

[rustigsmed]

super portable! haha
where is his accent from? is it minnesota?

[gregbradley]

It breaks down into 2 parts.

Mirror by Jim Lockwood.
The rest by Roland.

I have my name on the list. No announcement of planned production though.

Greg.

[Shiraz]

looks great, but what did they clean the mirror with - an old sock or something?

[Slawomir]

Unusual reflections are caused by a new revolutionary optical coating - C₁₇H₃₅COONa.

[AG Hybrid]

Impressive. On a side note. When is the delivery date on this from order? Is it at least this century?



:P

[gregbradley]

[QUOTE=AG Hybrid;1264271]Impressive. On a side note. When is the delivery date on this from order? Is it at least this century?


At the moment - never. I think there is a list but I am not even sure its planned to be produced. I can ask.


Greg.

[glend]

There is a thread on CN about AP waiting times, which is worth a read, it is in the refractor forum. From what i can gather, Roland, the old gent in the video, is for all intent AP. He is personally involved in every scope setup and quality checks. For this reason it will never be a big company, it is his baby. I believe scope production is limited to no more than 100 per year, and there is a waiting list.

[JimsShed]

Did that guy really say that mount has an accuracy of one-tenth of an arcsecond !!!?

[gregbradley]

That would be right with the absolute encoders. They apparently remove virtually all periodic error down to a fractions of an arc sec.

They can be retrofitted in the field as well which is another big reason I got an AP1600 for a future upgrade.

Greg.

[Atmos]

From what I have read, if you plan to go down the path of absolute encoders they really should be at point of manufacture. Something to do with optical alignment (referring to the encoder here, not the telescope) really needing to be factory set and not just an addon in the field.

Without finding some unbiased information its hard to tell how reliable it is. Cannot exactly remember where I read it (was when I was looking into a new mount) but it could very well have been information against those companies looking at having addon absolute encoder (AP & Bisque) as opposed to factory set, aligned and built in (Planewave, Astrosysteme Austria plus a couple of others that offer this).

[gregbradley]

Only AP offer field installed encoders. The mount I believe is prefigured to receive them so perhaps the alignments are already done. But there is no way AP would offer it if it were not able to be done perfectly in the field. They don't operate like that.

SB is only factory installed.

Greg.