All Farpoint Products are made in the USA at our facilities in Gold River, California.
Farpoint Bahtinov Focus Mask Demonstration:
How to select and fit a focus mask for your telescope:
In 2008, Pavel Bahtinov, a Russian amateur telescope maker and astronomer, published an ingenious new way to easily focus your DSLR camera, webcam or CCD camera for astrophotography. The method is simple, very intuitive, and the device has universally been named after the inventor: The Bahtinov Mask.
Attach your camera to the telescope, center a fairly bright star in your telescope and achieve a rough focus. Then place the mask over the front aperture of your telescope by “hanging” it on the plastic screws from the front dew shield. Take a short exposure. The image of the star will show diffraction spikes. The “center” set will most likely be shifted to one side or the other. This is showing the defocus.
Adjust the focus of your telescope and re-expose the star, once again showing the diffraction spike pattern. Iterate the process until you get the central diffraction spike centered against the star and the other spikes. When you achieve a symmetrical pattern, you have acheived the best possible focus. Remove the mask, center your target object and take your images!
Farpoint manufactures this "lifesaving" astrophotography tool out of virtually indestructible ABS plastic, which comes in two major types and in a range of sizes. The mask pictured below left is a general purpose mask designed to fit refractors and Newtonian telescopes. The mask pictured below right is designed to fit Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes. Both types of mask are available in a range of sizes to cover your imaging needs.
Users are often racked by the task of choosing and matching dazzling filters as well as adapters when it comes to using a filter drawer. It just becomes more confusing for those who are quite new to astrophotography. To solve this problem, Askar introduces a multifunctional filter drawer. The major feature or strength of this filter drawer is its integration of the most marketable filters, telescope and astronomy camera adapters. Users basically don’t need to worry about the related issues any more with this five-in-one filter installation device.
ZWO has released a brand-new FF65APO 0.75× full frame reducer with a four-element optical design. It has a reduction factor of 0.75x, which gives the FF65APO f/6.4 astrograph a shortened focal ratio of f/4.8 and a shorter focal length of 312mm. This allows for less total integration time and a wider field of view, bringing more convenience and possibilities for your wide-field deep sky imaging. The back focus distance is the standard 55mm. It also comes with two thread adapters of M54 and M48, and a built-in M48x0.75 2” filter thread, which makes the connection work simple and convenient.
This is my 3rd order with Thai Excite and also did not disappoint at all once again. After having purchased the Gran Turismo 71II was it time for a more wider scope and selected the Redcat 51 III WIFD. Communication went smooth and the delivery just as planned.