Some of us started out in AP coming from landscape photography or at any rate from using camera so it would be nice to know how well are those lenses (posssibly a lot of those lenses!) will perform under the stars. However, even the best MTF chart rarely gives the necessary feedback on this of the most demanding performance requested from any optical set. So here is my attempt to partially correct the lack of hard data by presenting these tests in the most neutral way possible (no embelishments, no distracting deep sky object, no fancy postprocessing, in fact almost no processing at all), as required by any even half serious test.

The tests are carried out by shooting the NCP on a static tripod a series of 30-50 short exposures (3-5s) which are subsequently aligned and stacked in PI, with no image calibration at all. Flattening the resulting light frames by DBE then colour calibration by PCC and finally hystogram stretching are carried to come to the final images presented here. Overlay is added to give an idea of the field size and notable objects, if any.