Color Imaging Train: October 21, 2018

October 21, 2018

Here's my working color imaging train with the William Optics GT81 APO. The leftmost component is the William Optics FLAT 6AII field flattener/reducer which brings the focal length of the GT81 to 382mm at f/4.7. Pretty fast. The problem, of course, with reducers and flatteners is nailing that 55mm T2 distance to the camera sensor. That means the off-axis guider has to be thin (Orion Thin OAG) and the inline filter drawer does as well. The last piece of the puzzle, or bit of trouble you have to deal with is focusing the off-axis guide camera, matching the guide camera sensor distance to the primary camera sensor distance. And I finally had a bit of clear sky at night--bright moon however--to dial this in. 

I added the filter drawer to be able to support UHC and other filters with the ZWO ASI071MC color camera. I don't plan on running with a filter most of the time, but some targets call for a bit more contrast.