Hey guys

I am still in the process of tuning my PDS200. I recently filled my tube with velours to reduce light reflections (I had some bad reflections in my M63 for example). This already brought some improvements But there are more things to upgrade... I always see the pretty spikes and colorful stars of others... and I was pretty disappointed with mine. I heard that a high-dynamic sensor (such as IMX571) would improve my star colors, but I want to switch to Mono anyways... I hope I can improve the star colors with the LRGB processing technique instead.

But as for the spikes... I got the tip to buy a better spider so I looked into it and found a very stable secondary mirror spider. I wanted to give it a try and actually bought it. And it really did the job!! The first image with my new spider shows a significant improvement of my spikes:

https://www.astrobin.com/leda6b/

I made a comparison with spikes from my old and new spider:

NGC_5005_7h_RGB_Spidercomp_overlay.jpg

I don't know if I should do direct advertisement... just google "lacera spider200" to find this ~200€ spider. It is more stable and shall sustain the adjustment for a longer time (don't know if that's true yet). But it really improved my spikes! It's a definite recommendation that's why I am opening this thread.

Let me know if you have any other improvement suggestions for the PDS200

Clear Skies
Marten
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