January 08, 2016 Unknown
A rare combination of clear skies, stable atmospherics and no moon last night finally provided me with an opportunity to fully test the potential of the Altair Wave 115 ED Triplet Refractor, combined with the Planostar 0.79x Reducer/Flattener - and boy was it worth the wait!
I wanted to compare the results to my previous scope - the extremely capable Sky-Watcher Explorer 190MN Pro Mak-Newtonian Astrograph. So I chose one of my all-time favourite subjects - M42, the Great Orion Nebula and Running Man. The image I captured using my 190MN was the first of my own astro-photos that made me go wow! The image comprised of 10 x 300s, 10 x 200s and 25 x 45s exposures, captured and stacked using Nebulosity 3 and processed using Photoshop CS6. The final result is now framed and has pride of place on the wall above my desk. I was convinced it was going to be hard to beat.
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| My previous attempt, using the Sky-Watcher Explorer 190MN Pro |
Now, before I compare the images I must point out that this is not going to be a direct, scientific comparison. For a start, there are a couple of significant differences between the 2 scopes; FOV being the most obvious, with 1.35° x 0.9° for the 190MN Pro, vs 2.13° x 1.42° for the 115ED with the 0.79x Reducer/Flattener fitted. The aperture being another significant difference, with the 190MN Pro being 65% larger than that of the 115ED. The 190MN Pro is also marginally faster, with a Focal Ratio of 5.3, vs 5.53 for the 115ED. However, I did use the same QHY8L CCD camera to capture the image and the NEQ6 mount and Lodestar XPress guide camera were also the same.
In an attempt to compensate for the smaller aperture and slightly slower Focal Ratio, I increased the length of the exposures to allow as much light to reach the camera's sensor as possible. The final image, which you can see below, is the result of 14 x 600s and 15 x 30s exposures, captured and stacked using Nebulosity 4 and processed using Photoshop CS6. Some may say this is an unfair comparison, but all I wanted to do was see if the Altair Wave 115ED was capable of achieving similar results to the Sky-Watcher Explorer 190MN Pro. The answer is yes - definitely! But that is my opinion - let me know what you think.
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| My latest version, using the Altair Wave 115ED and 0.79x Reducer/Flattener |
