FIRST LIGHT
some nice images showing plenty of detail in prominence and sunspots.
Our next target was the Moon on view in the daytime, and we were once again rewarded with pleasing views and images. The focuser on the telescope is a joy to use visually with your eye to the eyepiece; very smooth, it’s easy to achieve fine adjustments. We could see that a lot of thought had been put into this area and it would rival some top-end manufacturers.
Planets have not been easy to observe this year but the dust storms on Mars had started to dissipate during the review period, so we could see and image some structural detail on the Red Planet and also capture some nice detail with a mono camera and filter wheel. Saturn produced nice clear detail around the Cassini Division and on one clear afternoon we managed to image Venus with a one-shot colour camera.
Moving to the deep sky was not without its struggles through the review period because of cloud and a bright Moon. Eventually setting up visually, we did get good views of comet 21P with nice tight stars in the eyepiece. Looking around at other targets such as star clusters and double stars, we were pleased with the views.
Currently Altair offers no dedicated flattener or reducer for deep-sky imaging but is looking into it. With lots of changes in the camera market it’s not such a problem imaging at relatively long focal lengths these days so we set up the telescope with an 80mm guide-scope and tried a few different cameras on deep-sky targets. Using a range of imaging times from 60 seconds to three minutes for different targets, all the images had nice detail for the conditions.
The Altair 152 EDT is well designed with some nice touches and good optics. If your budget allows it would be a good addition for any astronomer.