Chromacor



The seeing last night, while not spectacular, was good enough for me to start to test the Chromacor that I recently bought from Astrobuffet for my 5" refractor. I've been fiddling with the Chromacor for most of a week now, using a diagonal loaned to me by a co-worker. (The diagonal that came with the Photon Instruments refractor isn't threaded for 48mm filters.) There is a bit of tinkering required, and I know that I am not quite done yet--but even at perhaps 85% of what it is capable of, I was able to see some impressive results.



Venus was surrounded by a violet haze in my uncorrected scope; with the Chromacor installed, Venus was essentially color-free. I could see a slight, but not objectionable violet fringe on one limb, and a very slight green fringe on the other (indicating that the Chromacor isn't perfectly collimated in the diagonal).



Jupiter had a violet halo at 190x; with the Chromacor, there was a barely perceptible violet fringe on one limb, with green on the opposite. Again, this is a collimation issue.



If all the Chromacor did was reduce the color, it wouldn't be worth the almost $600 I spent on it (and the remainng $70 I am spending on a threaded diagonal). It definitely provides a more contrasty image, with more detail visible--and even under less than wonderful seeing, I found that the Chromacor would let me go up to 286x, while uncorrected, the scope was limited to about 190x.



Saturn seems not get much of a benefit from the Chromacor, being relatively faint and with a smaller pallette of colors, it doesn't seem to get as much benefit from the Chromacor's color correction.