Well I have just done it! Sent the deposit for a 132mm F6.9 tonight.
I must say you are correct, Catalin is a delight to deal with.
Interestingly, the 132mm is listed as a limited edition with 10 being made. I would have thought this meant they made 10 lenses and would assemble the tubes as orders came in. In fact it is the opposite - tubes are all ready waiting for lenses.
Hopefully will have this scope by springtime!
Having fine glass hand figured especially for you by a master optician and then skilfully assembled into a mechanically excellent telescope is quite unique IMO, and therefore using such fine equipment adds joy to this passion of ours
Took only 33 days to get here...I was told by the postman these were held up at the airport...honestly we thought these were lost and Catalin kindly offered to make a new set.
Anyway, I am now ready to get back to astrophotography! Happy days! These adapters are very solid and weigh nearly 400 g; luckily the FT can (almost) hold a bucket full of water (have not tested it...)
The first image is with CFF flattener, the second with Riccardi reducer (sorry about image orientations).
That looks like a beautiful scope Suavi. I am not in the market for a scope but if I were I would be tempted by a nice 102mm wide angle scope with a flat field.
If AP contacted me and said they had a 130GTX ready I would go for it.
An FSQ130 sounds nice but no one seems to have posted any images through one that I can find.
An excellent 102 is a fine imaging instrument. Its good to see such a large and solid focuser on a small scope, that's unusual.
What is the corrected imaging circle of this scope? Will it handle a 16803 - 44mm diagonal?
I am VERY keen to properly test the Riccardi reducer, as well as the flattener. With the Riccardi the scope will be operating at f/4.5, as fast as I would like to go with a refractor and also with 3nm filters.
FT looks very solid and it is certainly a beautiful focuser, but there are a few things I preferred in my Moonlite, specifically I would like motor engagement ring in Boss II to lock in place more firmly, so I knew that the motor is properly engaged. Also, laptop connection with the focuser seems to be occasionally dropping; it never happened with my Moonlite. Already tried connecting it without the hub but the issue remained. It must be either SGP Pro issue or perhaps my laptop is too slow, because it only happens during running an imaging sequence. Again, had no issues like that with my Moonlite and with the same hub, same laptop and with SGP.
Greg, yes, Catalin told me that this telescope has 52 mm illuminated circle (because of machined baffles in the OTA) and 44mm corrected imaging circle at f/6 with their monster flattener. CFF's larger refractors have a larger corrected circle, with their next one up (132mm) having 52 or 55mm corrected imaging circle.
Will report further as soon as I get a chance to properly test the rig.
Last night weather was good so I finally tested the flattener and Riccardi reducer. With the Riccardi at f/4.5 I got a substantial tilt in one of the corners and will need to get a tilt adapter to try rectifying this issue. Elongated stars remained in the same corner as I rotated the focuser, so then I tried just rotating the QSI t-thread adapter and bingo - elongated stars were now in a different corner. Already ordered a tilt adapter to rectify that.
With the flattener at f/6 precise orthogonality is not as much important as at f/4.5, so the stars look acceptable. Nonetheless correcting the orthogonality should help the stars as well, so I will look into that in the following weeks.
As for good news, FT focuser worked flawlessly last night - I suspect previous connection issues were due to interference from cables powering dew heaters. New gear, new challenges...
Managed to get seven 15-minute Ha subs of the headless chicken with the flattener. Image scale is 1.18 arcsec per pixel: http://www.astrobin.com/291983/
I've had far worse tilt than that Suavi! Looking good though, once you get it all failed in you'll be humming along. I've been imaging at 1.158"/pixel (very similar to yours) and find it worthwhile drizzling a lot of the time. Even if all it does is get you from 2" to 4" FWHM, i find it allows you to process a little harder (albeit several times longer).
I've had far worse tilt than that Suavi! Looking good though, once you get it all failed in you'll be humming along. I've been imaging at 1.158"/pixel (very similar to yours) and find it worthwhile drizzling a lot of the time. Even if all it does is get you from 2" to 4" FWHM, i find it allows you to process a little harder (albeit several times longer).
Thank you all for your replies and advices. I will try to sort out the tilt soon (hopefully).
I would like to use the telescope with the reducer at f/4.5 for narrowband, and perhaps with the flattener at f/6 for some galaxy chasing one day.
Added a bit of data to the chicken (4hrs 15min in total). It is still undercooked but hopefully will turn out alright when I get enough data. Dozen of flats, bias and a stretch were applied.
EDIT: Sorry, forgot to answer your question Greg. Yes, it is QSI 690. Wouldn't swap if for anything at this stage, maybe with the exception of FLI 16200...
Last night I managed to significantly reduce tilt with the Riccardi reducer. It took 0.1 mm of camera adjustment to correct it. There is some slight curvature still present, but not sure if that can be corrected with playing with the spacing. It might be as well a limitation of the Riccardi, so I think I will leave things as they are. I have learnt that precision is essential with a refractor at f/4.5...
