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Thanks Ian. I updated the image with a repro so not sure which you saw. I just did it in the last 15 minutes. I am trying to get this one right as its going to be a mosaic.
I think I'll have to reshoot the area as I haven't got the very top of the neb. So it'll be a panel jobbie. Lagoon is tricky because of the high dynamic range plus it can look like a undetailed fluffy white cloud easily. So to keep the dynamic range yet show the ripples and ridges is a processing goal. Also that little tendril area to the left of the Lagoon I noticed in Paul's Ha Lagoon I wanted to keep in sight.
Cheers Russell. This scope is totally awesome and I am bit by bit learning how to use it to full effect. Not quite fully there yet but I am now getting into that familiarity with a scope you need to extract top performance from it.
Its easy to use in that it does not require collimation. It does not have star diffraction spikes so images look quite APO and the stars are very precise and Roland seems to have gotten a lot of the light energy into the core and not in the outer rings which give some scopes fluffy stars. In particular apart from whacking down the photons fast I see the stars are better shown in this scope than other scopes I have used. They can be made to come up nicely without overwhelming the scene which a lot of previous scopes I have used tend to do. Star sizes are small. Possibly the best apart from the AP140 I sold to Rick. Now that had small stars.
But 12 inches F3.8 and this level of precision and performance - hat's off to Roland he's pulled off another telescope miracle with his engineering excellence. The scope does not shift focus much at all with temperature, it cools fast, its solid as a tank. The thermal blankets are a smart idea (you could put them on any scope). The removable rear plates to help air the mirror ala Tak Mewlon is a good idea as well. The 2 fans are another plus. All 6 optical aberrations being corrected gives a view much like an FSQ only faster and more aperture. An FSQ does give some lovely tight stars and wide views though. The Honders though gives better colour with no colour bias and perfectly colour corrected - no chromatic aberration I can see. I wonder about cleaning though as the back is open with a fairly large gap all the way around the primary so dust potentially could get in. I'll have to be very mindful of that whilst still utilising the scope. Perhaps I leave those removable plates on when its windy.
Greg.
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