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Zak Jones:Tareq Abdulla: Yes, that was in US Dollars, and free shipping, so happy about it, and i keep thinking about adding FRA300 because first, for RGB i want a corrected scope and so it comes this FRA, and for narrowbanding i want a fast optics, i do have Canon EF 300mm F2.8L IS, i believe this is how much/many faster than this WO new scope? So i can use Canon for Ha/OIII and FRA300 if i buy it for RGB, i don't need super fast scope for RGB signals anyway, i wish William Optics can think about some affordable scopes to buy same as Askar and Sharpstar are doing, in fact i even got very nice offers to buy a triplet and a doublet from a vendor who messaged me for great offer deals and free shipping, so is what i love about it, having affordable cheaper offers and not care much about quality or design, after all the final images can tell, and i don't mind suffering with setup and good images than paying $$$$$$$$$$ for easy setup and Helluva results but i suffer my rest of life financially. |
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| Another thing to add, i do have full frame cameras as DSLRs and mirrorless, i will never use them for astro because non are modded and i won't modify any, so i won't buy a full frame astro cooled camera, it sounds all here are rich enough to afford an astro cooled full frame camera so paying $2k-3k for a small scope is nothing, good for them, i won't comment about it, so as long i can't afford the full frame cooled camera then for me this scope or any brand in this price tag will be pointless for me, no wonder why "Chinese" scopes are getting popular more and more due to their affordable prices regardless of the quality, my TS and Askar scopes are superb. |
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Cool!  Am I the first on this thread to order one of these. Ordered one last Wednesday. WO started sending them out Monday. Awaiting shipment notification.
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DavesView: Wow, I thought it's for 2024 release. Please post the first light! |
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Min Xie:DavesView: I was told by Tim at WO that the 111mm would be released in the middle of January, but that the 68mm was to start shipping last Monday. |
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| How it does in the corners of full frame at that focal ratio is what I want to know! |
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How it does in the corners of full frame at that focal ratio is what I want to know! Me too! Do you need my address for shipping? 😁 |
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| What’s missing from this discussion is the optical design. Is it a triplet with a built in 4 element flattener? A quintuplet with a 2 element reducer? If this is the case it would likely require specific backspacing. Or, is this a different design that does not require precise backspacing? |
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Philip F.: The scope is triplet with a 4 lens flattener and has a back focus requirement of 55mm. |
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| So quintuplet is 5 lenses, sextuplet is 6, what we call it with 7 lenses? |
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Septuplet. really disappointed with it having not only a hard Backfocus but the stupidly low 55mm. I’m using Riccardi gear with at least 20mm more that allows all kinds of gear (variable spacer, rotator, filter wheel) to sit before the camera. At this price point you’d expect a better approach than just making sure it fits the DSLR t ring gear. At f/5 there is the Altair 70mm EDQR 350mm and Askar fra300, at 50-60% of the price. Both are not Backfocus sensitive and have at least 70mm of spacing from an M54 thread. F/5 is slower but it allows 4 or 3 nm filters to be used. |
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Septuplet. That will open the door or the gate for more scopes as options in future, and who knows what prices it will be too, so people have to keep saving like $1.5k-3k just in case for new scopes hitting the markets, Time for me then to buy 6 scopes at once cheap prices than buy one in price of 6 together, i always liked images done from many scopes together than from one super scope, and that one super scope is expensive enough that it will force to have also nice items expensive too to make it perfect. |
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Tareq Abdulla: Pleiades 🤣 Actually, septuplet. |
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First light with the Pleides68. I have not adjusted any tilt adjustment screws yet. Bottom of the sensor is def needing some adjustment, with both left and right corners being off a bit. Will do that adjustment in the next couple of clear nights. 60 Sec exposure w/6200MC  Same exposure, but with bxt2 applied.  Rig setup (Bortle 9 plus the moon out...night looks like day)  |
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| Well that’s unfortunate. |
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Sean Mc: This is interesting. So have you already optimised the back focus using something like the aberration tool in hocus focus within NINA? I spent a while getting this right with a Hypercam 24CFX (bigger pixels but full frame) with a Riccardio M82 0.75 reducer on my APM107 (f/4.9) and after getting zero net backfocus error that left some noticeable tilt that I was just starting to fiddle with when BX2 emerged. BX2 nuked the remaining tilt effects which was pleasing. So it would be useful to know whether this has been nailed to the optimal BF first - manufacturer suggested spacings are rarely spot on. |
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First light with the Pleides68. I have not adjusted any tilt adjustment screws yet. Bottom of the sensor is def needing some adjustment, with both left and right corners being off a bit. Will do that adjustment in the next couple of clear nights. No, you may have misread. Thus far I have only mounted it up at around 55mm backspacing or so and took some shots. Next steps are to play with the tilt adjustment screws on the scope and use NINAs tilt tools (in hocus focus?) to dial it in. Once all the corners look even with each other I may play with backfocus spacing, or I may not. My initial impression is that it's already outperforming the FSQ106 with the 645 reducer as far as star shapes go (which has a pricy gerd m68 tilt adjuster on it), but I haven't really directly compared them yet. |
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Thanks for clarifying - very helpful. I don't think I misread, just curious how much adjustment you had done before trying it out. I think your policy of getting the tilt right first may well be optimal - I found it easier to do the BF first with hocus focus and see how it looked. Of course hocus focus might well do a better job of optimising BF if the tilt is sorted out already, so that it's got a clearer way of distinguishing radial vs transverse elongation. I'd put the new Askar M54 backfocus adjuster in my imaging train replacing a few spacers, and it's built like a tank and actually eliminated some of the tilt I'd had before while making it easier to refine BF on the fly. Interesting comparion with the 106 and 645. Do let us know what else you find out. |
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| Perhaps it's me, but I don't see a focuser on it. |
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Monty Chandler: It's in the middle on the far side. Fancy new design that claims less tilt. |
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| @Jon That looks pretty great for an IMX455 at f/3.8. I imagine this scope should work nearly 100% out of the box with larger pixels, e.g. an IMX410. |
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Monty Chandler: Any thoughts on how you might attach an EAF to it? |
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Tom Boyd:Monty Chandler: *the manual is now online and has a section on the ZWO focus motor. https://williamoptics.com/pub/download/telescopes/T-P-68BU/MANUAL-T-P-68BU.pdf |
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For what it's worth, here's a representative raw frame from an ASI6200MM-Pro (full frame) on the Pleiades 68. It's set at the recommended 55mm back focus, but it does look like it's could use a bit more if you peep at the star shapes in the corners. And yeah, BlurXTerminator 2.0 with AI 4 is magic with small aberrations such as these. The flat field illumination is very good and correctable via flats, background extraction, gradient removal, etc. First impressions are very impressive. The scope appears very well built and the WIFD design is very interesting. It was a bit weird to not have to mess with cable tied down after focusing - the cables don't move!  A ZWO EAF attaches per the instructions in the manual, and works just fine. To clear my mount, I did have to rotate the scope 180° with the focuser up top. The big drawback is that once the EAF is mounted, you either have to really carve up the foam in the supplied case and tolerate a great degree less of protection, or go find another case. Since these are imaging scopes, and most will have an auto-focuser, it would be really nice if the supplied case could accommodate that without too much compromise.  |
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Tom Zepf: Thanks for your updates. Much appreciated. Yeah, this is one of my primary complaints with regard to WO - the supplied cases do not fit use-configured scopes. On my GT81 I ended up purchasing a plastic DeWalt tool box and fitting it out with foam. Works great - would probably do the same here. For those that might be interested this is what I used: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006E1VMGK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BQY5T1I/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 |
