Every so often, someone posts a topic in this forum that is some variation of " How does one of the original AP Starfires, before Roland started using SD glass, perform compared to today's options?" The standard answer from those of us who own them is usually that for visual use they are wonderful, for imaging with today's cameras modern triplets are going to have an edge. I own two of them, and for the most part I would not argue with that answer.
However, that does not mean you can't image with them or that the images taken with them are bad. At the time they were marketed for astrophotography because of their superior color correction and relatively FAST focal ratio(for the time:-) compared to Achromat doublets. Searching online for images taken with these scopes yields slim pickings. So I thought I would start a thread where people who own or have owned these scopes hopefully would post any images they have taken with them. I think it would be especially cool to see scans of film images taken using these scopes. I will start off with a few of my doodles. I am not a dedicated imager by any stretch of imagination, but I occasionally like to pop a camera on the end of the scope and see what I can get. All of these are short exposure,unguided images that have been stacked and processed as is, without an sort of image calibration(darks, flats etc..) Drive by astro imaging as it were.
Ring Nebula Taken with a SSIc camera and AP 127 mm F8 Starfire, circa 1989. Oil spaced Triplet.
I enjoy doodling with my scopes and I am looking forward to seeing what others have done! These scopes are a very interesting part of amateur Astronomy history, and really the prototypes of what are the astrographs of today.
Cheers!
JMD
Edited by Wildetelescope, 21 September 2019 - 02:32 PM.