Hoegaarden Astronomy & Photography
On loan from a friend, I could spend some clear nights with this short-focus flat-field refractor. It has 70mm aperture and 350mm focal lenght, for an F/Ratio of F/4,9. It delivers a nice illuminated field and pinpoint stars almost to the corners of the frame. Some slight blue fringing is present near the corners. Focusing is very critical, and also very temperature-dependent. An autofocuser is almost indispensable to keep control over the focus.
The Heart Nebula in Perseus is an interesting region of red hydrogen clouds mixed with dark nebulosity and bright star clusters. This was a test-run: first light with the Sequence generator Pro combined with the Nikon D750 (with autofocus by PegasusAstro, worked wonderfull). Second test (living dangerously!): first attempt to mosaic automatically with SGP.
The D750 would crash SGP when hitting the “link” button: as soon as I touched that button, SGP would collapse and simply vanish in thin air. Solution: install the 2013 C++ redistributables.
The Optolong Pro filter OR the reducer/flattener (or the combination) imho added a lot of vignetting and uneven illumination to the image, which I had a hard time eliminating. So next test would be with a regular Nikon T-ring. If that does not solve the issue then it must be the F5 reducer. I noticed earlier already that images at F7 with the Nikon were a lot cleaner.
IC1805 or the Heart Nebula in Perseus. Image dedicated to my mom who passed way in September age 79.
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