[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by LewisM

GREAT article Ray - I have often contemplated doing that myself, but Marc beat me to buying the half-way there 8" GSO that was on the trader. I would have had no qualms fiddling and tinkering with it. I DO have qualms doing the same to my Mak Newt I bought instead

Thanks Lewis. You have to take pleasure in reverse engineering to get the mechanical components of one of these to work anywhere near as well as the optics - but its good fun when you get close. The Mak Newt is a great design - look forward to seeing some images.

Originally Posted by Lee

Thanks - I have a short piece of 40mm steel bar velcro'd to the mirror end opposite the focuser (not pretty!) to achieve pretty good balance everywhere....
I think my issue is a combination of a pretty light CF scope tube, and a particularly heavy moonlite focuser, and no guide scope offering some counterbalance??

Ahhh, thats what I like to hear - "pretty" takes a back seat to function... The Moonlite is a lot heavier than the GSO and I guess that it would upset the balance of the lighter CF tube.

Originally Posted by alistairsam

Fantastic work Ray, love the mods.
I had one of these and really loved the 8" F4. Focuser was the biggest problem in this and the flex in the tube.
I'm getting the RCC1 for my debayered dslr rig I'm working on. does it have a removable T2 thread? so 94.5mm with M48?
I'll be using it with a TS9OAG, 2" filter draw, mono dslr.
But how did you get away with 1.25" filters? the light cone being stumpy, aren't you losing a lot of light with both the 1.25" filter and the smaller chip?
how much does the RCC1 extend from the OTA tube surface?
do you have pics of your mirror cell?

Cheers
Alistair

Thanks Alistair. The T thread stays put.
The chip is relatively small, so 1.25 filters do not vignette at all in this geometry.
Of course there is a lot of light going by the chip, but I am not interested in huge starfields or nebulae, just want to get as close as possible to galaxies, PNs and other things that easily fit in the 0.7x0.6 degree field of view. I have the QHY8 if I want a wider field, but that doesn't need filters.
I cut the OTA and the focuser draw tube specifically to ensure that the RCC1 is flush with the OTA surface - I didn't want anything intruding into the light column and diffracting light around the image.
I thought about pulling the scope down to get a pic of the mirror cell - decided to leave it as is for now. Will post an image next time I clean it, but it is just the standard GSO cell without the clamps and with added silicone .

Regards Ray