Telescope Reviews: New 8" LX200ACF Tube

I just bought a new 8" LX200ACF optical tube for use as an imaging scope. I had posted here a week or so ago asking questions about how the mirror lock worked.

At the time, we were having typical northwest weather, which meant clouds and rain. There were a couple of nights that threatened to clear, and I learned that the OTA shipped way out of collimation but didn't have enough clear sky to do anything about it.

Anyway, it was clear all night long last night, so I got a chance to play with the scope. I'm happy to say that the scope is going to work well for imaging. Fixing collimation was easy once I got a few minutes to fiddle with it. Also, the stars are nice and round all the way through my ST-10's field and into the self guiding chip. This field is definitely more imaging friendly than my C8 (which is now a visual scope.)

I'm going to post some images here with the caveat that last night was cloud free with good seeing, but otherwise abyssmal for serious imaging. We had high humidity, poor transparency and moonlight you could read by.

The first image is a single 60 second luminance exposure of M13 with the LX200ACF, an SBIG ST-10, an IDAS LPR filter, and an Astro-Physics telecompressor yielding 1622mm of focal length. The image is unprocessed except for bias, dark and flat calibration, and quick and dirty stretching in Photoshop with curves and levels.

Thanks,
-Wade

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Stuff
Visual Stuff (shared with wife and kids, 10 & 12): Celestron Nexstar 5, Generic 6" F/8 Dob, Celestron C6 or C8 on ASGT mount, CGE-1400, Coronado PST, 12x70 Binoculars.

Imaging Stuff: Meade 8" LX200ACF with Optec TCF-S focuser on CGE mount, SBIG ST-10XME with CFW8, Astrodon filters, Canon EOS 20D.

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