Posts Made By: Jeff Blazey

Great discovery Anthony. You've made history and the world news!!

Jeff

Yeah, can't wait to check it out again. See my thread below:

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=672636&poll_id=&news_id=&page=

Made for a very impressive sight and a lot of fun.

Jeff

Travis:

Depending on the size of your secondary, you might be able to sneak by with a 3.5" hole.

Jeff

Very nice and thank you.

Jeff

That IS major cool. A tough target!

Jeff

This and the shots above are great. I've noticed that with the jet stream well to our south, the seeing has been excellent...not to mention the great, cool summer evenings...one to remember.

Jeff

You're killing me with these shots!

Keep shooting.

Jeff

Another view

Well, the lens is supurb. I can detect no zones or residual spherical in geen light and the figure seems exceedingly smooth with no edge issues at all. Once thermally stablized and seeing permitting, I get a very nice, tiny, intense airy disk with a faint first ring. To be honest, I've never seen a good steady airy disk from ANY aperture over 8-9" but the seeing this summer has been, at times, exceptional here in southwest Ohio.

False color. Well yes, after all it is a big, relatively fast achromat, but I gotta tell yah it's not NEARLY as subjectively bad as I was preparing myself to deal with and quite easily ignored especially at lower powers. And you know what, I and several others who've look at Vega, for example, have actually enjoyed the view better without the help of the Chromacor. There is a certain beauty to the intense deep blue/purple that's a bit beautifully arresting. It's also easy to ignore the CA as the lens is so stunningly sharp! That's what grabs my attention front and center.

And who says a large achromat is not really a deep sky object scope. It excells at deep sky with some of the best views of M13, M92, M27 and so forth I've EVER had. M92 in particular was a pile of diamond dust on black velvet.

As the lens cools, I also chronically start the observing session with an 8.5" aperture stop, which yields an F16 focal ratio. At this point it's a toss up as to using the Chromacor at all. Again I'm a bit taken aback by how LITTLE false color there is. With the 6" stop it's just not an issue at all at any magnification I care to use. I told Barry I'd be using various stops depending on seeing. Using stops has been a mixed bag on previous achromats as many tend to have zones in the middle. Barry said, "Don't worry about that. There'll be no center zones". Indeed. He was right. With the exception of the reduced CA the 8.5" & 6.0" stopped lens looks just as well corrected in green as the full aperture.

And a word about the Chromacor. I love it. I do need the proper spacers and yeah, I do get lateral color at full aperture but when I find the on axis sweet spot (which is about a 3-4 Jupiter diameter), there is only a smidge of CA left. It's very similar to my 5" F8 1989 vintage AP on axis. One night during exceptional seeing when using it at full aperture on Jupiter the amount of unforced, easy detail was spectacular. The polar regions in particular were alive with subtle detailing. I've never seen such a range of detail before on Jupiter. On the moon, Plato was again spectacular. Cratelets? You bet! And all over the place and the floor of the crater is not flat. And don't get me going about using the Denk II.

I'm happy....VERY happy.

Jeff

It's hard to look up when you have your face buried in your black berry or texting.

Jeff