After waiting 4 months for my 8” Klaus Helmerich Carbon fibre tube to arrive from Germany , I finally finished building my new rig for Sydney to replace the trusty old 6” which has served me well for the last 6 years.
I wanted a slightly faster scope at f5 , longer focal length at 1020mm , more aperture and only a marginal increase of 3kg in payload from the old 6” metal tube newt.
A big thank you to Paul and Diego at Sidereal Trading
Includes my existing re used GSO mirrors and GSO dual speed focuser with ZWO EAF from my old 8” metal tube newt
Also I’m upgrading to Mono in about 4 to 5 months so the Antlia 3nm Narrowband filters will be a game changer under Sydney’s Bortle 8 muck
Photos attached
You can blame me if it’s cloudy for the next few weeks, I can handle it
Thanks all for your kind comments
I have some work to do, she didn’t reach focus tonight , out by about 12mm
Reason , TS Optics Coma Corrector moves your focal plane by 20mm and this OTA didn’t have any spare length past the focuser , it had spare length between spider and focuser which doesn’t help at all with focus
My 10” Carbon Fibre down south was lucky I guess , I had 4 to 5mm spare travel
Bugger !!
Cheers
Martin
My 10"F4 has one of those tubes, the next upgrade when I have some spare cash (Ha) will be on ethe the CNC milled spider and secondary holders they make now. Mine has the big Astro Systems spider and holder (With a larger secondary mirror) and while it works, it is finnicky to set up.