A Potent Astrophotography Accessory
With just the StarSplitter accessory (either purchased alone or with the StarSplitter Video Astronomy Solution used without the video camera) you have a compact on-axis guider. This is a great tool for astrophotography. On-axis guiders use the same optical path that you photograph with, eliminating differential flexure from a separate guidescope. The StarSplitter uses a high quality beamsplitter that does not suffer from the optical distortions of cheaper plate beamsplitters. Therefore you get high quality images through both ports and good quality astrophotographs. Since both ports have equal optical paths, the guide camera sees the same view as the main camera and differential flexure is eliminated. The amount of light however is split in half so your exposures would have to be twice as long to achieve the same signal level in your astrophotographs. This penalty is more than offset by the more accurate guiding done with a StarSplitter accessory. What matters is the quality of the final image. The StarSplitter Accessory allows for more accurate guiding than with a smaller guidescope. Plus, the increased light gathering ability of your main scope over a smaller guidescope potentially makes for more guidestars that are bright enough for good guiding.
Both sizes of StarSplitter (1.25-inch and 2-inch) can be used as on-axis guiders. The 1.25-inch StarSplitter has fixed input and output ports that are sized for 1.25-inch accessories. As such, it is more suitable for smaller cameras and autoguiders. The 2-inch StarSplitter comes standard with 2-inch sized input and output ports. However, all ports have interchangeable adapters, so you can mix and match 2-inch and 1.25-inch accessories as well as attach directly to the back of a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope if you use an SCT to T-thread adapter (not included) on the input port. Traditional off-axis guiders are nearly worthless as they have such small fields of view that it can be hard to find a guidestar. Other types of On-Axis Guiders are very expensive and some distort the image your guide camera sees. The StarSplitter allows your guide camera to see the same field as your astrophotography camera, with a distortionless view for both. The StarSplitter will quickly become your indispensible astrophotography accessory. Check out our blog entry about the advantages of on-axis guiding with a StarSplitter here |
Images of and taken by the StarSplitter accessory showing the distortionless image quality as well as the lightweight and compact nature of the StarSplitter itself.
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