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RICHARD COFER

VdB 141 Ghost Nebula

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Posts Made By: Roland Christen

February 26, 2009 07:36 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

NGC3621

Posted By Roland Christen

>>Also the fluorite lens of the TEC180m FL is showing its strength here with less scatter than other lenses and slightly more throughput.>.

Both those statements about scatter and throughput are not correct.

1) Your triplet lens has two other elements of ordinary optical crown, so even if the fluorite was replaced by air or vacuum, the two other glasses are still there.

2) ordinary optical glass has insignificant scatter in the scheme of things. It is almost all back scatter and very little forward scatter. The light that is scattered goes in all directions, especially back out the front of the lens (that's why you can see the faint laser trace) and almost none of the energy reaches the film plane. Unlike a mirror, where almost all scatter goes into the direction of the film plane, optical glass has almost zero focused forward scatter. That's why normal optical crown can be used in coronagraphs where no scatter can be tolerated, and mirror coatings cannot be used at all due to forward scattering.

3) the light transmission of optical crown and fluorite is almost identical over the visual wavelength range from near IR to the edge of the UV. Only in the UV does fluorite transmit more light, but that is not a useable wavelength, plus the other cover glasses of a triplet absorb light there anyway. You will not be able to measure the diffrence in transmission between a fluorite and an ED oil spaced triplet.

Lenses in general, and oil spaced triplets in particular, have very high light transmission efficiency. Refractor tubes can be ideally baffled to prevent stray light. If the figuring is good, then you can get very good focused energy into the image, which allows you to stretch it to extract ectremely faint detail. It has zero to do with the fluorite, but everything to do with the way the scope is built.

Tony Hallas discovered this himself when he was experimenting with various refractors at his deep sky site. He found that he could go far deeper with a refractor than he could with his 14.5" Cass before background light intruded into the image. Example is his latest M81/82 image, among others, which shows extensive faint extra-galactic dust around those galaxies. His scope is a 206mm F8 triplet apo, non-fluorite: http://www.astrophoto.com/M81M82.htm
I also have a preliminary Rosette which he has not published yet, but which he will show at NEAF. It has faint detail in the core that I have not seen in any amateur photo. No fluorite was needed, just a well baffled oil spaced triplet refractor.

Rolando

February 26, 2009 07:49 PM Forum: Refractors

Chinese 115mm f/6.95 Triplet

Posted By Roland Christen

>>Just wondering if the optical gurus (paging Rolando! )
could offer some insight/opinions/commentary about the info shown here--
http://astro.uni-tuebingen.de/~grzy/APO115auswertungneu.jpg >>

Well for one thing, the interferometer results are misleading because the spherical has been removed from the final figures.

The fringes show a lens with a large amount of spherical aberration, so the Strehl ratio would be much much lower than 0.97. For some reason they chose to remove the spherical component, so that leaves only the coma and astigmatism, which together contribute 0.16 wave or 1/6 wave P-V. That's quite high in my opinion, as these two should be much less than 1/10 wave total. The lens has a definite undercorrection of almost 1 fringe P-V which translates to 1/2 to maybe 1/3 wave P-V wavefront (I would have to analyze the fringes to get an exact figure).

So I would say, it's not well corrected for the fundamentals, never mind color correction. What good is perfect color correction if the image is fuzzy?

Rolando

February 26, 2009 08:10 PM Forum: Refractors

Chinese 115mm f/6.95 Triplet

Posted By Roland Christen

Here is what a 130mmF6 triplet apo looks like when the elements are first assembled after grinding, edging and polishing, but before hand figuring and careful optical alignment.

Rolando

February 26, 2009 08:51 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

vdBH24 region in Vela

Posted By Roland Christen

Beautiful! I guess the more you look, the more filled is the universe with all kinds of stuff.

Rolando

March 2, 2009 03:38 PM Forum: Bad to the Bone Autos

Parking Problem.

Posted By Roland Christen

You do not need psychiatric help. I have similar fears. My 1994 T-Bird Super Coupe has never received even one blow. No door dings of any kind. I park far away from the crowd (I don't mind walking). I try to park on end spots and never next to any large trucks or SUVs.

My wife's Taurus got two matching blows, one on either side. One was from a truck and one from an SUV - both did when they were backing out, scraping the rear doors of her car in the process (both took off without leaving their names). The damage was extensive, cost her $1500 to repair, and when she went to trade the car in, the salesperson noticed the slightly different paint. She was offered $2000 less because of the slight nismatch.

Rolando

March 2, 2009 10:03 PM Forum: Bad to the Bone Autos

87 Subaru Brat

Posted By Roland Christen

Super nice!

Rollie

March 3, 2009 02:03 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

M81/82 Again!

Posted By Roland Christen

Congratulations. You captured a lot of interesting detail and quite a bit of interstellar dust.

Rolando

March 4, 2009 03:03 PM Forum: Equipment Talk

SCT in a Fork or GEM? Pro's / Con's

Posted By Roland Christen

If you are a visual astronomer, go with the fork. If you plan on imaging, get a decent GEM.

Rolando

March 6, 2009 11:37 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

CG12

Posted By Roland Christen

That's a cool object! Great job. You da dust man wink

Rolando

March 16, 2009 03:48 PM Forum: Astro-Physics

Stick-On Letters

Posted By Roland Christen

The letters are from a pre-made sheet, and they are not from individual lettrs. The parts between the sheet are pulled away in one piece, leaving just the letters. Of course, one can do a bit of trickery in Photoshop to come up with any result.

Rolando