First light Daystar Cal H on Askar 107 PHQ

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sywong2000
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First light Daystar Cal H on Askar 107 PHQ

Post by sywong2000 »

Hi everyone,

As earlier in my post asking whether the Askar 107 PHQ would fit the Cal H imaging. Finally I have a chance to get a couple of images from a cloudy afternoon with this scope.

I stopped the scope down to 80mm. There're two filters I placed in front of the objective as the ERF, one QB29 Blue filter, 80mm diameter and 2mm thick, and then a GRB3 UV/IR, in a 3d printed cell. You can find the QB29 spectrum later for your reference. Both around $20 USD each - I'm not so sure the optical quality, but with this price range, the most they can get is the commercial grade only. I'm betting they're for use with the commercial cameras on a 82mm mount. Anyways I'm trusting these two filters as the ERF and there're no 1.25" filter down on the imaging train. I connected a 2 inch extension, then a Televue 2.5x powermate, and then the Daystar Quark Calcium H filter. This results in a ~F/23 setup.
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The focuser of the scope is very smooth, and very easy for me to get into the right focus.
I tested it with QHY 174mm and then a ZWO ASI 290mm. Here're the results.
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It's my second attempt on Calcium H images and I've found it sort of difficult to get to the right parameters when processing them in ImPPG. And noticed there're serious vertical bands from the ASI 290mm - I'm not sure why but I seemed to see the same on my first attempt with a Takahashi 76dcu. I can see other posts with the same camera but never see this pattern... There're also uneven illuminations in these two images. I didn't have the time to tune my Quark dialing yet - it's too cloudy and I only to manage to get a few usable video sequences.

Yet from this quick first light test, it appears the scope is doing pretty good on the Calcium H range. I'm sure some other 80mm or 100mm refractor can do very similar or even better. To me, as an upgrade, from a 76mm aperture to 107mm, the Askar 107 is worth the price. I can also use this scope for deepsky imaging also.

It has been raining here for almost a month already. I'll try it later with the H alpha later when the weather gets better.
Attachments
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2022-06-17-0814_2-U-L-Sun_Halpha_lapl4_ap190_processed.jpg (505.48 KiB) Viewed 1176 times


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marktownley
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Re: First light Daystar Cal H on Askar 107 PHQ

Post by marktownley »

Promising first results. Try it at 80mm aperture but without the front erfs, see if they have an effect on optical quality.


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