Rolf,
I've done a few more sets on a few more nights, pretty much with no change in my imaging train.
Seeing has been better on two occasions to my initial sets. Still no result for me.
The moon is in the way now for a few weeks so I hope to use the down time to try a few things with the secondary/ spider.
You may be right about the spider vanes.
It's certainly not the primary obscured by clips, and I feel it's also not due to collimation, or collimation
change rather, due to OTA flex when slewing from Alpha to Beta.
See the attached Airy disks of out of focus stars near Sirius (low declination) and stars near the SCP (high
declination).
Almost no change.
I really want to get to the bottom of this and hopefully get a positive result from my rig.
I'm reluctant to turn the entire OTA 10 or so degrees to take the diffraction spikes further away from the PP Disk PA.
And I probably won't if the tests with an alternative spider show no
improvement.
I might even give one of the SC1.5 webcams a go too!
Also, it has been remiss of me not to apologise.
I did raise doubts, I followed them up with my own observations, and
until I get to the bottom of it, I really need to apologise for firstly
hijacking the thread, and secondly doubting your results.
I never doubted your abilities BTW Rolf, only your results.
It's also interesting the list Dennis has attached to your better result thread.
I noted the PA, inclination and angular size of a few other PP disks.
It looks like we could have some far easier targets for amateurs, based
on your result with beta Pict.
regards,
Steve