[ZeroID (Brent)]

I built this scope, the RN8F8 about a year ago. A super lightweight, 8" F8 Newt using a Gary Nankivell mirror and secondary on guitar string suspension. Concept was longer focal length for almost coma free focal plane and minimal diffraction spikes with .3 mm E strings as the suspension components. Had a heck of a job collimating it as the guitar strings were very difficult to balance the cross loading so I parked the project for a while.
Recently I had another go at it but this time using 4lb fishing nylon, sprat line stuff and managed to get a better result with collimation as the nylon was less likely to break and had more stretch. Yeah, I know the purists will get onto me about it but I need to get this to work to at least prove the design. If it doesn't I'll go back to the drawing board for a new spider idea.
Anyway it's now up on the mount, aligned and waiting for the clouds to clear. It only just fits in the Ob between the walls and I've had to reroute a lot of cables to accommodate the extra swing but it should give me a better magnification for smaller targets, galaxies and the like without losing too much in exposure time.