Ant0nio
04-03-2020, 11:07 AM
I chose this telescope & the dedicated reducer/flattener primarily for use as a wide field instrument for imaging. My hope was that it would be a viable grab & go for visual observation also and my first impressions suggest the 76EDPH is very capable on both fronts.
I purchased the scope/FRFF online from https://www.testar.com.au/ in Sydney & it landed on my doorstep in regional Qld 3 days later, included was a bench test report confirming collimation was spot on, a nice reassurance to have with a new purchase.
It came triple boxed, (third box was courtesy of the retailer) & visual inspection revealed a nicely turned out instrument with a quality fit & finish. The reducer/flattener splits in two so you can install a 2" filter internally and when attached to the focuser about
half of the FR/FF is concealed within the drawtube keeping it all nice & compact & well balanced, thread quality was very good & all components screwed together smoothly & precisely.
The tube is flocked as standard which was a nice touch I thought & a pleasant surprise as it is not a feature which is advertised. The R&P focuser is very solid & operates smoothly with no detectable image shift.
I chose to test it visually the first night, I had clear skies & the seeing was a 9 on Skippys' scale. I have to say I was very impressed. At the end of the alignment procedure I slewed back to A Crux, With a 4mm Delite giving 104x, it was an easy split as were Alpha Centauri & Hadar.
Sirius showed no spurious colour in focus, defocusing did show a slight amount but also very tight & uniform diffraction rings in & out of focus. This telescope gives a very positive snap into focus also.
Omega Centauri was nicely resolved with the 4mm Delite & more so with the Vixen HR3.4mm, a decent feat for the 76mm aperture I thought. The wide field views of The Milky Way & larger DSO's were very pleasing, the entire "sword of Orion" fits comfortably in the FOV with a 7mm Nagler.
With a 17mm Nagler (the lowest mag you would want to go) Eta Carinae was an awesome sight & stars were sharp as a tack out to about 95% of FOV.
The following night promised similar conditions so with the FR/FF & my SBIG 8300c attached I elected Omega Centauri as a target to check the corner stars for roundness & adjust back focus if needed, it turned out the 40mm of spacers + the ~17mm back focus of the camera was almost spot on.
I was only able to capture 5x2 min exposures in total before clouds chased me over to M42 for another 5x2 mins before it was clouded out & all over for the night.
After processing the minimal amount of data on these two objects, the results showed pleasing star shape & good colour correction to my untrained eye. I was surprised with amount of detail revealed from only 10 minutes of data.
Overall I would have to say I am mightily impressed so far & looking forward to getting the best out of this capable little telescope. For more Astro images, keep an eye out on the beginners forum & If you've made it this far, thanks for reading & clear skies,
Tony
I purchased the scope/FRFF online from https://www.testar.com.au/ in Sydney & it landed on my doorstep in regional Qld 3 days later, included was a bench test report confirming collimation was spot on, a nice reassurance to have with a new purchase.
It came triple boxed, (third box was courtesy of the retailer) & visual inspection revealed a nicely turned out instrument with a quality fit & finish. The reducer/flattener splits in two so you can install a 2" filter internally and when attached to the focuser about
half of the FR/FF is concealed within the drawtube keeping it all nice & compact & well balanced, thread quality was very good & all components screwed together smoothly & precisely.
The tube is flocked as standard which was a nice touch I thought & a pleasant surprise as it is not a feature which is advertised. The R&P focuser is very solid & operates smoothly with no detectable image shift.
I chose to test it visually the first night, I had clear skies & the seeing was a 9 on Skippys' scale. I have to say I was very impressed. At the end of the alignment procedure I slewed back to A Crux, With a 4mm Delite giving 104x, it was an easy split as were Alpha Centauri & Hadar.
Sirius showed no spurious colour in focus, defocusing did show a slight amount but also very tight & uniform diffraction rings in & out of focus. This telescope gives a very positive snap into focus also.
Omega Centauri was nicely resolved with the 4mm Delite & more so with the Vixen HR3.4mm, a decent feat for the 76mm aperture I thought. The wide field views of The Milky Way & larger DSO's were very pleasing, the entire "sword of Orion" fits comfortably in the FOV with a 7mm Nagler.
With a 17mm Nagler (the lowest mag you would want to go) Eta Carinae was an awesome sight & stars were sharp as a tack out to about 95% of FOV.
The following night promised similar conditions so with the FR/FF & my SBIG 8300c attached I elected Omega Centauri as a target to check the corner stars for roundness & adjust back focus if needed, it turned out the 40mm of spacers + the ~17mm back focus of the camera was almost spot on.
I was only able to capture 5x2 min exposures in total before clouds chased me over to M42 for another 5x2 mins before it was clouded out & all over for the night.
After processing the minimal amount of data on these two objects, the results showed pleasing star shape & good colour correction to my untrained eye. I was surprised with amount of detail revealed from only 10 minutes of data.
Overall I would have to say I am mightily impressed so far & looking forward to getting the best out of this capable little telescope. For more Astro images, keep an eye out on the beginners forum & If you've made it this far, thanks for reading & clear skies,
Tony