Picked up the new Stellarvue SV70T from the Fedex depot en route to Snake Valley astrocamp this weekend. Thanks to crazy Melbourne long weekend traffic, we arrived at dusk and unboxed, assembled and setup in the dark.
Couldn't figure out why the stars were not round in the corners until I noticed that I had forgotten to remove a 5mm spacer that was attached to my camera, so the spacing was out. Anyway, with some help from the Bluester and others at SV, we sorted it out eventually but only managed 2x20min 5nm Ha subs before the clouds rolled in for the rest of the weekend.
First impressions? Well packed and nice build quality. Beautiful precise R&P focuser, strong enough to hold my QSI wsg8 at zenith, nice smooth camera rotation action and I like the useful elevated blocks on the dovetail.
Loving the almost 3.0 x 2.4* FOV, can't wait to get this baby under clear skies!
Last edited by Andy01; 21-03-2016 at 06:27 PM.
Reason: Updated image
Well, looks like a nice scope in use there ...and if people can't see the running chicken in your shot there (running to the left with wings outstretched)..?.. well, they have no hope
Thinking of getting a nice wide field APO for myself later in the year actually, having my Proline 16803 sitting in a wardrobe idle is criminal...
A lovely image, Andy, and very nicely processed too. You must be very pleased. And all that in just 40 mins. Spacer aside, that you could set it all up straight out of the box in the dark speaks for the ease of use.
If you were to add more data, would you be tempted to include a tiny bit more of the field off the left hand edge?
Wonderful FOV, looks like that little scope is going to perform beautifully
Thanks Colin, as Big Kev used to say, I'm exited!
Quote:
Originally Posted by marc4darkskies
Congrats Andy! Excellent first light!
Cheers Marcus
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Well, looks like a nice scope in use there ...and if people can't see the running chicken in your shot there (running to the left with wings outstretched)..?.. well, they have no hope
Thinking of getting a nice wide field APO for myself later in the year actually, having my Proline 16803 sitting in a wardrobe idle is criminal...
Mike
Wouldn't be a running chicken without your input Mike, cheers!
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
A lovely first light. A high quality refractor is a beautiful instrument to image with.
Greg.
Cheers Greg- hoping to become good friends with it soon!
Quote:
Originally Posted by RickS
Congrats, Andy. A tidy looking little scope.
You might need to fine tune the spacing just a little more. I ran a copy of the image through the FWHMEccentricity script in PI (see pics).
Cheers,
Rick.
Hi Rick, not exactly sure what that is/means but I get the idea. There's a 1mm spacer as well a 5mm so maybe I don't need the 1mm? I'll test it tmrw if its clear. The stars arn't quite round on the oag phd screen, so there's a clue that something's still not quite right. Cheers for the heads up
Quote:
Originally Posted by Placidus
A lovely image, Andy, and very nicely processed too. You must be very pleased. And all that in just 40 mins. Spacer aside, that you could set it all up straight out of the box in the dark speaks for the ease of use.
If you were to add more data, would you be tempted to include a tiny bit more of the field off the left hand edge?
Hi Mike, yes absolutely, i'll pay more attention to the framing next time round. Guess I was too focussed on getting an image up on a cloudy night to get it framed perfectly! Cheers
Hi Rick, not exactly sure what that is/means but I get the idea. There's a 1mm spacer as well a 5mm so maybe I don't need the 1mm? I'll test it tmrw if its clear. The stars arn't quite round on the oag phd screen, so there's a clue that something's still not quite right. Cheers for the heads up
Hi Andy,
Eccentricity values of 0.42 or less correspond to stars that look perfectly round visually. Bigger numbers mean that they look less round, like in the corners of the image you posted. Hopefully, some small adjustments to the spacing will give you round stars to the edge...
Update - I've reframed this to landscape format and added another 5 hrs 5nm Ha - all 20min subs.
Hopefully this will soon become a full HST narrowband image
...and if people can't see the running chicken in your shot there (running to the left with wings outstretched)..?.. well, they have no hope 
