PicoStar from AE

[rumples riot]

Hi all,

well I have been waiting for a long time; 4 weeks to get my new collimation day star. It finally arrived today in a giant box.

Upon opening I found that all was in order and the day star seems fine, although I have to get a 9v battery becasue as the saying goes "batteries not included". Of note is that you can brighten the intensity from an 8th Mag star to a 1st Mag star which is ideal on bright days. Also gives the minimum distances involved and has a tripod mount so that you can take it out in the field and collimate over grass.

So now going down to the shops to get the said battery and then see if it works. Although can't really test it until this infernal weather abates, I don't have anywhere that is 19m long and undercover. BTW East coasters you should also receive some rain out of this monstrous cloud bank.

Anyway here is the link for the PicoStar and I will report when I have tested its capacity.

http://digitecoptical.com/ae-pico-star.htm

Comments welcome.

[h0ughy]

Pictures, review, and then setup a library recording book to loan out your personal little star!

I will be intersting to directly compare this to the torch in the box method, to gain an appreciation of bang for bucks?

[atalas]

Ah thats great paul ! looking forward to hearing your results ,these things would be great for collimating an SCT If they work well .
ALL SCT OWNERS STAY TUNED !

[davidpretorius]

well done Paul,

sct's & collimation, glad i went the dob which don't need collimation!

thanks to asimov who told me when i was first looking for a scope that go a dob, and everything would be ok. mind you, houghy said the same thing about sct's and then asimov said that eq's were better than dob bases and rob said pentax was better than nagler and ken said that the sky was falling, the sky was falling....

fingers crossed re star camp, i would love to have a up close look at your lovely new aquisition.

[Striker]

Looks intersting Paul...I love new gadgets.

Is it that hard to collimate a SCT...I know mine was out just slightly but it only took me about 5 minute's a week ago using Bob's Knobs and all was done.....I thought it was very easy....maybe I am missing something.....maybe my efforts for collimation are not as precise as your's?????????

[h0ughy]

Your just Chicken Little Dave :P

[rumples riot]

Hey yes it is a beaut. Very bright but very small hole. This will give my efforts at collimation a boost. The variable light brightness is great, just what is needed. Now I need to sell the laser for good.

Tony, collimation for planetary work is super super critical. My collimation at the mo is near perfection, definitely great for DSO work, but at magnifications over 1041x with the toucam in and imaging the planets it needs to be tweeked often. My goal is to see if I can get images close to Damien Peach. Most of you have seen my jupiter image from earlier in the year and I had the collimation very close then. I now want it perfect for Mars, crap seeing aside. Every 2.5 years is a long time if a mistake is made. So standby. I will post images with how well it works and some images of the diffraction rings it creates.

Paul

[beren]

:) Cool look forward to the info etc , hope it helps to achieve that lofty benchmark

[cventer]

Paul did you buy it from digitec optical ? Whenever Iemaile dthem they said they did not ship outside the USA


Regards
Chris

[rumples riot]

No I got it from telescopes.com. However it came from England direct to me.

[h0ughy]

being a bit nose here Paul, but how much did it cost all up delivered?

[rumples riot]

Ahh, I think that it was around 230 delivered. Don't know for sure as I have not yet seen it on my statement. But it should be around that.

[h0ughy]

Thanks Paul. We look forward to that comparison and a review! :)

[rumples riot]

Well finally got around to doing a bit of a review of this piece of equipment.

First off the bat the star comes with two strips of velcro and a tripod mount. I fixed my velcro on the back of the star so that the control panel faces up while on the tripod.

While up in the Flinders Ranges I finally had an opportunity to use the Star. All that travelling had moved my collimation just a little, not enough to really worry about but enough when imaging to give slightly off images.

We set it up about 25metres away from us and set it to the highest setting because we were using it during the day. I have to say that at Mag one this unit pumps out the light and easily shows diffraction rings on my scope and any other that was being pointed at it. In fact, we managed to get the rings so close that you could just see the first ring from the star and then the outer ring was tight against the first. The unit goes from mag 8 -mag 1, which gives plenty of possible scope for use.

The Star worked perfectly, in fact upon checking with a real star I could not see any need for adjustment. The advertising was correct and no puff present. The actual star was so small it cannot be resolved by my 10" at 25m. A truely wonderful instrument and one that most telescope owners should consider investing in. Of course you could make one yourself, but you will not be able to get the hole small enough. And in addition, the variable brightness is of real value. You can collimate at night when the seeing is not so hot and use the lower settings to get an even smaller star.

Anyway, at some point I might submit a formal review of this item with star images and pics of the unit. Until then this will have to do.

Paul

[Robert_T]

Sounds great Rumples! Did you find ground effects on seeing an issue in using the picostar outside at all?

[davidpretorius]

you bugga paul, now you've got me convinced for another piece of equipment!!!

[rumples riot]

Robert, only get a slight waver in the image with ground effect. I really do mean slight. Not even worth considering.

Davo I did say this was good. Up to you. I also have a laser going cheap.

[davidpretorius]

i saw Bird using a laser collimator on my scope to finish off the collimation.

how cheap is cheap?

Congrats on 2000 posts old boy!!!

[rumples riot]

Davo, I bought it for 350 and would sell it for 200. It is a Kendrick 2" SCT and Newt laser collimator.

Thanks for the old boy comment. LOL.

[davidpretorius]

thanks mate, i will have a little think???