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Old 16-04-2014, 08:40 AM
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Paul Haese
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Paul Haese is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Adelaide
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Logieberra View Post
Anyway, back on topic. Paul, any chance of providing us with a bit more info regarding the good work that you're doing with GSO? I was under the impression that the RC project is being driven by Astro-Tech in the US (an arm of Astronomics?) Have you been to the factory itself? That would be sweet! Importantly, it sounds like the company is responsive to the market, which is a good sign for the future.

My only suggestion, GSO should partner with Starlight Instruments on their Feather Touch Focusers and include them as standard. I'm pretty sure that TEC and Officina Stellare do something similar?

See the pic, it could be 'Feather Touch Focuser - Made for GSO'
Hi Logan,

The new back plate should be in my possession in the next week or two. GSO's initial test showed that another modification had to be made and that meant a delay in sending it to me. The bottom line is that the imaging train will be carried by an adapter on the mirror back and that will be independent of the mirror cell. That adapter will have centring screws to adjust for tilt and pan to ensure the sensor is centred to the optical centre.

Not been to GSO factory. I have been to the Synta one before. Jim is very responsive to my comments. Astronomics and a couple of firms in the Europe are their main customer but it seems that R&D is not being driven by them.

Bintel is pushing to have the focusors of Starlight and FLI incorporated as part of the package to Australia. Pricing will go up, but in the scheme of things a 16" scope will be barely over 10K in that event.

Another idea is that we are asking Jim to include a dew heater in the secondary and possibly a dew heater in the primary tube housing. Dewing on the secondary is a real problem without a dew heater.

Despite the bull that was spouted about the optics in this thread this week, I have found the optics to be very good. My mirror set were not hand picked and I got the first available scope three years ago. So I believe this would be indicative of this manufacturers quality. I will say this though; you cannot collimate the rear cell of this scope without a collimation scope. You can try other methods which will get you close but a collimation scope is essential to delivering good collimation. I will have to do some final collimation on the secondary via star test, and that shows how finicky this type of scope is with collimation. Despite the recent image I have produced with the RC12".
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