Delta Rho 350 first light

[Geochron (Jon)]

Hi everyone,

I am very pleased to share a couple of 'first light' images from my Delta Rho 350 which, I believe, is the first of its kind in Oz. Cassegrain with focal length of 1050mm - so quite wide-field, but also pretty fast (f3).

Amusingly (or not) I ordered this scope in September 2021 (yes 2021) - shortly after it was announced - and it finally made it to Melbourne at the end of Feb this year! How long have you waited for a new telescope?!

Unfortunately, since then, the skies have been very unforgiving with haze from hazard reduction burns almost every day. So progress has been a little slower than planned.

Anyway, here is 6 hours 3nm H-alpha on Carina, just as a test really (one hour already looks very good). I still need more work on the stars: apart from being overexposed, there is still residual tilt in the system. However the adjustments are extremely small for such a fast scope and so any further refinements will have to wait for clearer skies and further patience.

Here also a quick Hubble composite adding in a few hours each of S and O data. 'Starless' because I don't currently like the stars...

Higher res images here:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/i7s4m...6vmyt3xdn&dl=0

Guiding is with an Evostar 72ED as there is really not enough back focus for an OAG once you have a rotator, focuser and filter wheel locked in. Using a Prima Luce Labs rotator and focuser with custom-fabricated adapters courtesy of Testar (thanks for all your help making this happen Adriano!).

I have been using a RASA 8 for a long time but this is a pretty serious upgrade for me and coincides nicely with my retirement - so, hopefully, interesting times ahead!

cheers Jon

[Atmos (Colin)]

Congrats on the new telescope Jon, given the fairly heavy rain right now I’m guessing you’re the cause of this
That’s a very wide view you get there! What camera do you have paired with it?

It doesn’t look like you have much tilt going on which is good but there is a reasonable amount of field curvature. By the looks of the stars I assume you’ve used blurxterminator?

[Geochron (Jon)]

hey Colin,

Yeh....rain. Haven't seen that since 18th January (not that we have been counting). LOL.

There aren't many adjustable parameters with these scopes. I have been informed by Planewave that 'the focal plane distance isn't a critical dimension as long as you are able to reach focus' so we are just left with collimation (only the secondary, primary is fixed) and tilt.

I probably used NoiseExterminator on those images but not a great deal of fiddling otherwise.

cheers, J

[Geochron (Jon)]

ps camera is ASI 6200MM

[Leo.G (Leo)]

Congrats on the new telescope Jon, given the fairly heavy rain right now I’m guessing you’re the cause of this

Haha, I was thinking the same, or someone bought a new canoe or motorbike, lol.


Stunning image Jon!
That is a long wait for any delivery, I'd have been tearing my hair out.

[Peter Ward]

Just had a really good look at the Ha data.

Just sublime.

Delightful details, contrast and field correction.

Only goes to show: you really only get what you pay for and this puppy didn't
come cheaply.

Nice one

[Geochron (Jon)]

thanks guys.

Yes - not really sure what was happening during those two and a half years that I was waiting - I don't think that any scopes were seen 'in the wild' for at least a year and a half after the initial product announcement.

Intriguingly, however, the final DR350 does look a little different at the rear to the original depiction so I'm guessing that there was probably some last minute tweaking going on in the design room?

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Yeah looking good so far, nice bit of kit that, awesome.

May you get plenty of clear skies to use it under Jon ..where is it setup?

I think many Astrophysics scope owners have waited waaaaay longer than that for their scopes, like try a decade

Mike

[Geochron (Jon)]

thanks Mike,

I'm in Nillumbik, Melbourne. Nights can be very clear here but SQM values rarely exceed 20. I think the latter part of this Planewave blurb nicely summarises my situation:

This telescope is designed not only for remote observatories under pristine dark skies, but also for astrophotographers looking to push the boundary with short exposures from light polluted suburban skies.

cheers, J