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Old 03-11-2016, 03:09 PM
glend (Glen)
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glend is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Lake Macquarie
Posts: 7,121
Congratulations Kevin..and so it begins. Looking at the image i would agree it is slightly out of focus, but the 'coma' seems to be more of a tracking error as they are all aligned in the same direction. Your small refractor does sound like an achromat, which will have substantial colour aberation, and the purple fringing is pretty normal. Do you know the focal length of the scope? You could shoot through a filter like a "Fringe Killer" but you won't be able to clean it all up. That doesn't mean you can't learn the ropes with it. A Bahtinkov focus mask is pretty easy to make yourself, there is a website that allows you to download the pattern and cutout your own. I make mine from black plastic folder covers from the newsagent, cutting out the oattern with an exacto knife - it doesn't have to be to perfect as long as it produces the diffraction spike pattern required to focus on.
There are ways to clean up star shapes in Photoshop but better to try and get accurate tracking performance at this point.
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