Astroprints two-piece Bahtinov Mask with magnetic connection for Celestron 8" SC

Astroprints two-piece Bahtinov Mask with magnetic connection for the Celestron 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain and EdgeHD

Precise focusing made easy - now also ideal for use with HyperStar systems.

The new two-piece Bahtinov mask was designed specifically for the Celestron 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and offers significant advantages over conventional one-piece Bahtinov masks:

Thanks to its two-piece design, the mask can be easily attached to the telescope from the front - even if a HyperStar system with a camera and cables is already installed. The two halves of the mask connect precisely and securely via built-in magnetic connections.

This eliminates the need to awkwardly fit a large, one-piece mask over cables and attachments, especially in tight spaces around HyperStar cameras.

The Bahtinov mask:
The Bahtinov Mask is named after its inventor Pavel Bahtinov. This focusing tool allows precise adjustment of your astro pictures to the focus plane of your telescope or camera lens.

This is how focusing of your camera on your telescope or lens works:

Attach the mask to your telescope and slew the telescope to a bright star.

Turn on your camera and watch your selected star on the live view screen.

If the image isn´t yet in focus, the central line of the Bahtinov pattern is shifted. Adjust your focuser until this very line sits exactly inbetween the other two lines.

Now you have achieved optimal focus. Remove the mask from your optics and you can start the exposure of your object.

Practical advice from Teleskop-Service:

Using a Bahtinov Mask for focusing works especially well for deep sky photography. Correctors and Barlow lenses are not a problem.

Ideally you want to use a star with medium brightness for focusing. It should neither be too dark nor too bright. The lines of the Bahtinov diffraction pattern have to be clearly visible.

The chosen star shouldn´t be positioned in the center of your live view, because most telescopes or lenses, although corrected, do not produce a plane field of view. We recommend to position the star in the outer third of your image. That way, you will achieve a better overall sharpness across your field of view.

- Bahtinov mask, two-piece

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