Re: Photographic scope choices?

Bratislav Curcic (epabcc@epa.ericsson.se)
Tue, 2 May 95 09:29:09 EST

C Over the last ten years I've ground a number of mirrors starting with a C 8" f/6 Newtonian, 10" f/5, 10" f/12 Cassegrain, and 3 10" flats (testing C them against each other in various combinations). I've begun to think C about a photographic scope. The Ritchey-Chretien combination looks good C from a number of perspectives save for speed. Ditto for the Schmidt C camera save for the length of the tube. For testing the R-C I'll need C to build a caustic tester (unless there's a commercial version?). For C grinding the Schmidt corrector plate I was thinking of using a vacuum C cell to warp the plate.

Either of the above systems has strongly curved focal plane, Schmidt's very awkwardly accessible focus as an extra nuisance. How do you intend to deal with that ? Field flattener ? Film bending ? Schidt's fast f/ratio is quite unforgiving to focussing errors (some 50 microns for say F/2). Be aware of thermal effects - ordinary materials will expand/contract more than enough to defocus and ruin your photos completely. People used Invar rods before, I'd recommend using carbon fibre (for ANY photographic telescope, as a matter of fact).

Ritchey-Chretien is in my opinion far too complicated for amateur, without any real gains - it still has astigmatism, curvature of the field, and it's reall pain in the *** to figure.

Schmidt is really capable of excellent results, but again pain to use. Film cutting and fiddling with cuts is quite unpleasant experience (hypered Tech-pan id PHENOMENALLY sensitive to fingerprints !).

I'd personaly choose something with a flat, well corrected, easily accessible focal plane. I'd again prefer something that I can use with a "normal" SLR camera as well. Take a pick between Lurie-Houghton, Concentric Schmidt Cassegrain or Wright. CSC has the best performance, Wright is cheap, light and relatively easy to make, and L-H has all spherical surfaces.

8" f/4 systems comparison: Wright covers most of 35mm with 25 micron images, about 40 um in the corners Lurie covers 35mm with a bit better images (30um or so in the corners) CSC will cover large format (6x6 or 6x7) with less than 25um images

Good luck, Bratislav