Should you buy Hyperstar or RASA?

good day Dylan from the baron Bay Observatory here this video is sponsored by higho scientific they sell rassas and hyperstars but more on that later I got a really good question from a subscriber would like your opinion on a rasa as compared to a hyperstar I have a c925 and two c1s 925 and one of the c1s have a V4 hyperstar as this is a hobby I'm curious as to whether a C11 with a hyperstar is equal to an 11-in Razer in some of your videos you have mentioned that you've used a hyperstar so I'm curious as the advantages and disadvantages from Wayne and Lisa in New York thank you this is a really interesting topic and I haven't thought about it for a while but should you buy a rasa or hyperstar now in 2024 now I don't like reviewing gear on this channel because I feel like you can't review something properly unless you've tried all the options that's not something I'm in a position to do this is a very expensive Hobby and uh I know what I use and that's about it but I am in the position of having used hyperstar and rasses so I've got a little bit of insight there and IP a few of you who have subscribed to this channel over the years saw me starting with my rasa journey and now I'm on a different Journey with the C1 and it's not because I don't love the razza I do and I will have this in the observatory at some time but right now I'm doing this whole thing where I'm going down this path of automation I'm getting to the point where I don't have to go into the observatory I can program everything and everything's automated and I'll talk about why I can't do this 100% with with the rasa or hyperstar let's have a chat about rasa versus hyperstar my name is Dylan odonnell and you're watching Star [Music] stuff if you're not sure what Ras or or hyperstar is or what I'm even talking about uh basically they are asog telescopes flat field telescopes designed for photography we put the camera at the front of the whole telescope which looks super weird but it means that you get down to F2 and F2 Imaging is insane that is so fast to get the equivalent exposures on my C11 I'd be taking hourong exposures for stuff that I can get in a minute or two with the raser so they're really popular telescopes especially man does celestron's lid latch system really bug anyone else Celestron make these magnetic Imaging at f2 is Magic in fact it's the desired speed if Sky surveys asteroid detection near Earth object detection if those small transient targets are what you're going for or you're trying to do deep exposures of big nebulas I say big because they have a very wide field of view generally although if you get up to the RAS of 36 it's pretty tight now hyperstar is a way that you can get all the advantages of aasa and be shooting at f2 but you don't need to buy a whole new telescope you can buy an adapter that goes at the front of your existing Schmid cigra telescope and if you've got a Schmid cigra telescope that's a really attractive option because it means you don't have to go out and buy a whole new rig you can just attach this adapter to the front it's essentially a focal reducer that sits at the front and you get a raser which is amazing but a couple of things to be aware of is that because you have the camera at the front you do have to deal with defraction spikes oh damn it Dyan what the hell some people like defraction spikes and when they were a necessity what I would do is string the cables at right angles so I get those nice defraction spikes but they're never as nice as Newtonian spikes and some people will try like a spiral method to hang the cables so that they sort of blur out and you don't get those spikes I definitely don't like spikes so I really enjoy shooting with the C11 right now cuz I'm Spike free but let's look at the main differences between the rasa lineup and the hyperstar lineup because hyperstar is down version 4 now that's very different to when I had hyperstar I believe mine was a version one but also this is a version one and the rasa lineup hasn't really changed internally they might have changed some manufacturing and I think the focus rail system for the mirror but other than that they are the same products they released when they launched check out the range now we have four rasses the 6 8 1136 and we have five hyperstars because they've also got the 925 however if you look at the F numbers only one of the rasers the rasa 8 is actually f2.0 the others are f2.2 whereas the hyperstar version 4 is now getting down to f1.9 and also some of the hyperstar version 4S are using more of the image Circle so you get an even bigger field of view which is perfect if you're using those bigger cameras as well now f2.2 to f1.9 it doesn't sound like a lot and in some ways it isn't because when you're Imaging that fast we're talking about minute long exposures sometimes 2 minutes if you're feeling crazy but in actual fact over the course of the evening and collecting all the subs the difference between f2.2 and f1.9 if you do the maths to get the equivalent amount of light down onto the sensor you need to take an exposure that is is at least a third longer than an exposure that you'd have to take with f1.9 and a third is not a small amount 33% that's uh that's quite significant if we're talking about an hourong session you do need to add 20 minutes to that session to get the same amount of light now of course the other obvious reason why you'd buy a hyperstar over a dedicated telescope like this is that it is changeable you can swap on your hyperstar you can change your Schmid cigra to be F2 or you can jump back to the native focal length and F10 or you can add a reducer and go to F7 or you can add baros and go to f25 variety of focal lengths you can get and image field of views you can get is really really amazing and that's something I really enjoyed on the 925 with the hypar but the advantage of having the rasa is that you don't have to reconfigure your whole scope every time you want to change every time you take the mirror in and out you've you are adjusting the colation a little bit I never found colation to be much of an issue changing that mirror in and out it was actually pretty good surprisingly good but if you are someone who likes to tweak and tune your gear or you're in an observatory situation and you have things configured just so it can be a big deal to reconfigure that all for a hyperstar whereas with a dedicated telescope I can literally just take my C11 off with all its image train still connected move that somewhere else and put this on with a completely different CA camera setup now the reason I have recently moved away from using the rasa a lot is because I'm doing a lot of this Automation and using nenina to change filters electronically to focus electronically all of that stuff um you can focus you can focus the razza these days with a zwo eaf focuser or the new Q focuser has a bracket now just newly release so you can do it with that too but the filters the filters are a problem uh if you like shooting in monochrome and if you are a real astronomer you do then you want to be able to change filters and over the course of a night with a rasa if you're shooting an RGB run or an sh run or something like that you need to go out and physically change those filters whereas with my C11 that's all electronic now I don't even have to think about it it's all programmed into Nina it changes the filters for me refocuses and all that sort of thing so it's less suitable for automation that said the rasses are generally considered good for beginners because you can put a color camera on there and not have to worry about any of that stuff now swapping the whole telescope out every time you want to change to F2 uh might seem like a big deal and and it sort of is but it's less of a big deal than reconfiguring your whole image train also this is not a small telescope it is bigger than a C11 sh Crain um I think my C11 comes out to about here obviously it's the same diameter this is a big heavy telescope so hyperstar gives you that convenience factor to be able to change between your focal lengths and obviously you do want to do planets now and then so if I had this in the observatory right now I can't switch to planets easily without swapping the whole telescope off whereas with hyperstar you can keep everything set up and then switch between those F ratios as needed I am very impressed with the hyperstar V4 lineup it looks quite good and every time they iterate these hyperstar versions the field flattening gets better and better as well obviously that's related to your back back focal distance but the guys at High Point scientific or Star owner they'll spec up what you need based on your camera so that you get that perfect back focal distance and then you don't have to think about it but the rasers in general are just very very easy to use hyperstar is also very very easy to use I would recommend both the products the only decision you have to make considering uh you said in your message that you already have hyperstar V4 I don't think you would need to get a rasa cuz you've said you already have two v4s two hyperstar v4s there's really nothing to gain by getting a Ras up because you already have that set up the only reason you would do that is if you I mean if you have the money to burn great uh if you want the convenience factor of just being able to swap the whole telescope instead of swapping the prim the um secondary mirror every time um then maybe go for the raser I'd be interested to see um if there are going to be any updates to the raser range I have no insights whatsoever but certainly it seems that star owna are iterating quite quickly and if you are interested you can go directly to Star Arizona but I can recommend High Point scientific High Point scientific are an American vendor but they really ship anywhere these days they have a price match guarantee that'll sell you hyperstars that'll sell you rasses that'll sell you anything you need for your astronomy journey and I get lots of happy comments in my comment section saying how happy they are with the service and so I've got no problems recommending High Point scientific use the links in the description you can build a carbon copy of my rigs uh I have all my gear listed www.h Highpoint scientific.com I hope that helped answer the question uh I do want to get back to using the rasa I love this thing I did have great experience with hyperstar as well as a beginner that really sort of kickstarted what I was doing with astronomy uh anyway thanks for the question Wayne and Lisa in New York you're very close to High Point scientific and thanks everyone who have been enjoying this current Deluge of videos from me I'm sorry you have to see my face so often I was sort of on a roll so I've sort of been enjoying it yeah and had clear skies last night so I actually got some more data which was really fun I'm trying to think if I had anything else to say about rasa or hyperstar I think I've covered the main points really but yeah it sounds like you've already got two hyperstars so you might know more than I do about this anyway hope you enjoyed this video and I hope your astrophotography and astronomy journey is going well my name is Dylan odonnell and you've been watching Star stuff remember everything is meaningless and we're all going to [Music] die I'd like to take a moment to talk to you about this channel cringe mid my kids don't respect me they won't respect me until I reach 100,000 subscribers on this channel and get these silver PL play button so please like And subscribe I sted up I stuffed up I smiled

Channel: Dylan O'Donnell

Views: 15,295

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Id: vDqXhyUQV-0

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024