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Hi Eric
That is some rig you have and I looked up the 0.7m PWI which I see costs U$210K - awesome but expensive.
Unfortunately, my location's seeing does not justify a scope much bigger than 16".
I am convinced that the AP1600 without AE has the capacity to guide at 1" assuming Pempro applied and autoguiding used, this being easily beyond the seeing limitations of the site. The real question is whether AE actually improves performance beyond that given these seeing limitations.
I am also painfully aware that the location is on the top of a mountain and windy conditions can be prevalent. Many times in the past I found data was unusable even on a low flexure system due to wind gusts. Supposedly the fast control loop associated with AE will ameliorate these issues to a great extent. I have no way of knowing whether this is true, or the extent of protection the AE control loop provides.
n regard to unguided imaging I think there is sufficient evidence that at focal lengths of 3m and above unguided imaging over long exposure times is not feasible.
Thanking you
Chris
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