I just made a mask for my refractor tonight that gives me lovely diffraction spikes in images.. didnt use it much tonight, but I plan to in the coming months..
Geoff - Trevor isn't cheating, he's imaging with an RC, it gives diffraction spikes anyway.. he's just using the plug-in to sharpen them up I imagine..
In my case, Well, I've had 2 newts, an RC, an SCT, an MCT, and 4 different imaging refractors... I'll tell you now, A real telescope is in my opinion, one that makes the individual user happiest.. for me, my TMB APO is a REAL telescope, even if it is only a girly little 80mm... Some targets just need diffraction spikes to be impressive.
Open clusters are the best example.. and open clusters with associated nebulosity are too.. Pleiades without spikes is like a meat pie without sauce.. however, not many newtonians would fit all of M45 in the field of view at the same time... My APO does it comfortably..
Horses for courses mate..
Ps. its only cheating if they are 100% added by software after the fact. If you go to the effort to build something that goes onto your scope and produces diffraction spikes, then in my opinion, thats not cheating, thats being creative and artistic.
Spot on Alex the plug in gives you the ability to rotate the diffraction spikes to match the angle of your original spikes thereby enhancing them.
It also allows for colour saturation, rainbow effect, size etc quite a useful plug in. Like I said for anyone who likes and gets diffraction spikes in their images
