"Please do this. I need to see someone do it and report on it for whom this is not their first astro-rodeo.
My fears are:
1. Extreme difficulty in collimation and or frequency of collimation.
2. How to put anything other than a DSLR on it - filter wheel is NEVER going to work.
3. Focusing it at F2 will be a nightmare and need to be done every hour.
I have only ever seen one RASA in operation. That was an 11" about two years ago. The guy was using a round color camera - Starlight Express as I recall - and was setting up at around 7PM in the summer. I chatted with him for a while and he was really positive about the scope. I came back 3 hours later and he was still trying to get collimation and/or focus working properly. I do not recally how he automated his focusing. That put me off permanently on RASA and Hyperstar.
I am a person who prizes ease of operation above absolute quality. I want to have fun, not spend my night searching out USB cabling problems or why software doesn't play nice with other software. So, I'm dying to hear from someone who makes this new puppy operate easily.There must be a ton of RASA owners on this forum, though."
1. My RASA came almost perfectly collimated, per the Celestron test. I'm not about to mess it up trying to remove "almost".
2. I'm using a 183 color astro camera. Can't see why people would want to use anything else, maybe a 183mono with a filter drawer.
3. Focus is _really_ easy, either manually or with the Celestron motor. The configuration of the scope means you need almost no focus travel, so the single speed focuser is geared _way_ down. I'm using autofocus, you could "get away" without it, at a small cost to image quality.
No software issues, I integrate everything seamlessly with Voyager. I had a friend with a 3D printer (doesn't everyone have one of those? <grin>) make me a wire loom that was posted on the Internet. Using it is easy, and it greatly reduced diffraction spikes from the wires. Which weren't that bad even before I started using it.
The advantage over Hyperstar is that everything is optimized for F2. The disadvantage is that it's a one trick pony, and a Barlow is unlikely to work well.
The unanticipated issue is how sensitive it is to tilt. Still working on that, a PreciseParts spacer is on order. Also the field is not as flat as I would have hoped (still, it's decent) wondering if varying a little from Celestron's spacing would improve that. Anyone reading this who can tell me?
Edited by bobzeq25, 18 September 2019 - 12:44 PM.
