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Old 25-11-2009, 07:18 PM
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Satchmo
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley View Post
They seem to need a flattener though which is odd as they display coma something an RC should not be displaying.

Greg.
The elongated star images at the edge is defocussed astigmatism. RC's are coma free but suffer strongly from astigmatism without a field flattener with which they can produce very sharp round image at the edge. I've always thought , at least for the shorter focal length RC's at 12" and under , that the " coma -free " moniker was a bit of a furfy because of the off - axis astigmatism. the big observatories don't mind that for astrometry purpose as its still easy to find the centroid of an ellipse.

Mark
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