First Light for the C8 (astropical)

First Light for the C8

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

First light with the new Celestron C8 XLT CG-5.

The clouds cleared a bit around 5:00 AM. It was as clear as humidity allowed, but the atmosphere was horribly instable like seeing the Moon through shallow water, perhaps because the Moon was right above my roof, though I reckoned that the roof tiles assumed equilibrium with ambient by early morning. For this reason, I shot without barlow at native focal length of 2000mm. For this FL to achieve with my old 6-inch f5 Newton, I need a 3x barlow which sets the f/ratio to f15. With the C8 you get this at f10, meaning way shorter exposure time and faster fps.

The images are smeared and distorted (no, you are not tipsy and your reading glasses are clean), surely not so when taken under better conditions. When seeing gets better, you C9.25, C11 and C14 owners, take shelter, ha :-)

Each image is a stack of 400 frames at gain 200, mono-8, 10-bit ADC through an IR640nm filter, 1.5x drizzled.

In a nutshell, the C8 does not only impress with its light weight. It has a long focal travel, the focuser is soft with fine gearing and rigid. What puzzles is that the visual back is still using screws instead of modern clamp pressure locks.

In full accordance with the laws of optics the C8 delivers more details than the 6-inch Newton, how much more can only be benchmarked by taking images with both scopes side by side under same but better conditions. This requires a clear sky though, but I am a lousy dancer.

Actually, I was after a C9.25, however, its 3000 USD tag is too expensive while anyway unavailable for quite a while. Since last year, Celestron products are imported and distributed in Japan by Vixen as the prices went up sky-high by 50% on average.

I am receiving so many emails saying "Congrats, you won the lottery jackpot!". Hope the C8 is THE jackpot.

Be safe!

B

Description: Exposure 7ms at 142fps.

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C

Description: Exposure 6ms at 166fps.

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D

Description: Exposure 7ms at 142fps.

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E

Description: Exposure 6ms at 166fps.

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F

Description: Exposure 6ms at 166fps.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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