TV76 – Tele Vue Optics

Tele Vue-76 Gallery: Catching Up with Diego Cartes!

Back in December 2018, we featured some spectacular wide-field, deep-sky images by Diego Cartes Saavedra in Chile. All the images were taken with his Tele Vue-76 APO refractor and Tele Vue TRF-2008 0.8x Reducer/Flattener. This combination achieves a 380mm focal length at f/5, ideal for imaging large swaths of deep sky. You can still read the original blog at Tele Vue-76: Imaging the Southern Hemisphere. At the end of that post, we wished Diego continued success in his astrophotographic journey. Ever since, we’ve followed his progress through his postings on the AstroBin imaging hosting platform for astrophotographers. We felt it was time to “catch up” with him and post some of his latest captures in this gallery blog.

NGC 6188 ─ The Fighting Dragons of Ara (Hubble Palette)

The Fighting Dragons of Ara (Hubble Palette) by AstroBin user Diego Cartes. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Imaging was done with Tele Vue-76 APO refractor, Tele Vue TRF-2008 0.8x Reducer/Flattener (converts Tele Vue-76 to 380mm f/5), ZWO ASI 1600MM Cooled Pro monochrome camera, ZWO 7x36mm Filter Wheel (EFW), and guiding with ZWO ASI 290mm Mini ─ all riding on a Celestron Advanced VX mount. Imaged with bin 1×1 through ZWO OIII -7nm 36mm: 59×900″ (14h 45′), ZWO SII -7nm 36mm: 78×900″ (19h 30′), & ZWO H-alpha 36mm: 69×600″ (11h 30′) for an amazing total integration time of 45h 45′.

Prior generations of supernovae explosions spread dust and gas in this complicated region of space. Continued explosions compressed this material and sparked the formation of new massive stars. Stellar winds from these stars intricately sculpted the region into areas of glowing gas, reflection nebulae, and dark clouds of dense matter. The resulting dark, dusty lanes conjure up images of two dragons. Light from open cluster NGC 6193 illuminates the large blue reflection nebula where the dragons face off. The dense, blue object at the lower-right is pk336-00.1 (also NGC 6164 & NGC 6165) ─ an emission nebula formed from the expanding outer layers of a giant, hot, O-type star at the center. Around this compact object is the faded outer ring of reflected blue dust from earlier shedding events. This image was awarded an AstroBin “Top Pick” nomination.

Sharpless 2-308 (Bicolor palette)

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Tele Vue-76: Imaging New Mexico Skies!

Brian Paczkowski has been employed by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California since 1983. Some of his work includes the Galileo Mission to Jupiter and the Cassini Mission to Saturn. He is currently the Europa Clipper Science Manager.

Every clear night he images with his Tele Vue-76 installed at a remote observatory located at Dark Sky New Mexico (DSNM). He dedicates his Instagram wall of astroimages, “to my love of astrophotography.”

Bode’s Galaxy (M81), Cigar Galaxy (M82) by Instagram user Brian Paczkowski . All rights reserved. Used by permission. Tele Vue-76 telescope with Tele Vue TRF-2008 0.8x Reducer/Flattener and QSI 683 CCD camera riding on 10Micron GM2000 HPS II mount. Exposure through Astrodon Lum+Ha+RGB filters at -20C (22 hours of LRGB data and 15 hours of Hydrogen-Alpha). Processed in PixInsight and Photoshop. Images acquired in December 2020.

Located in the northern regions of Ursa Major and 12-million light-years from Earth, the two prominent galaxies in Brian’s image are Bode’s Galaxy (M81) and The Cigar Galaxy (M82). They are joined by NGC 3077 (an elliptical galaxy slightly further away) in the upper-left corner. All three are gravitationally interacting members of the M81 Group of Galaxies. This wide-field image shows foreground dust in our own galaxy covering the starscape.

In the close-up crop below, the intervening dust is not emphasized in processing. The yellowish core of M81 indicates an older population of stars while the red “spots” are from glowing hydrogen gas excited by ultraviolet light from newly formed young giant stars.

Bode’s Galaxy (M81), Cigar Galaxy (M82) (crop) by Instagram user Brian Paczkowski . All rights reserved. Used by permission. Tele Vue-76 telescope with Tele Vue TRF-2008 0.8x Reducer/Flattener and QSI 683 CCD camera riding on 10Micron GM2000 HPS II mount. Exposure through Astrodon Lum+Ha+RGB filters at -20C (22 hours of LRGB data and 15 hours of Hydrogen-Alpha). Processed in PixInsight and Photoshop. Images acquired in December 2020.

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Tele Vue-76: Imaging the Skies over Washington!

Andrew Thomas has been posting beautiful wide-field sky images on his Flickr feed. He’s imaging with one of our smaller scopes, the highly portable and capable Tele Vue-76 APO refractor! Here’s an image made by Andrew with this scope during the Great American Eclipse in August 2017.

2017-08-21 Solar Eclipse HDR by flickr user Andrew Thomas. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Andrew writes:
“In this photo, the detailed structure of the solar corona and reflected Earthshine illuminating the surface of the Moon is revealed in this HDR composite of images taken at different exposure lengths. Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, is visible to the far left …”.
Imaged with Tele Vue-76mm APO refractor with Nikon D7100 DSLR camera riding on an iOptron iEQ45 Pro mount. Capture software was Eclipse Orchestrator v3.7. 4 sets of exposures at 1/1600, 1/400, 1/100, 1/25, 1/6, 1/3, and 6/10 sec @ ISO 200, stacked to reduce noise and enhance detail. Location: Madras, Oregon.

Andrew gave us permission to re-post these photos on our blog.

I’m glad you enjoy the images I’ve been able to capture with the Tele Vue-76. It’s a wonderful scope for both visual use and imaging. I don’t think I’ll ever give it up!

Continue reading “Tele Vue-76: Imaging the Skies over Washington!”

Tele Vue APO Design and Build “Secrets”

Over the years, we’ve seen conversational topics in online amateur circles that repeatedly crop up concerning the definition of apochromatic refractor, triplet vs. doublet design, and how glass designation might define performance. We expect these questions to continue to appear as new amateurs discover the hobby. So bookmark this blog post because here you’ll find notes on Tele Vue’s philosophy and build practices concerning our telescope line of 100% APO refractors.

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Tele Vue-76: Imaging the Southern Hemisphere

Our very portable Tele Vue-76 APO refractor has been popular with eclipse-chasers as well as with users that cross over into spotting and birding. With the popularity of small and powerful dedicated imaging cameras, the performance of the Tele Vue-76 is getting noticed by deep-sky imagers on the go. Case in point, Diego Cartes Saavedra is producing outstanding deep-space images from various locations in the southern-hemisphere with this scope. All his images in this blog post were taken from July through November 2018.

Diego’s study of the Tarantula Nebula and surrounding region in the Large Magellanic Cloud examines the area imaged through different filters. The first image is a monochrome version taken in Hydrogen-α light.

NGC 2070 – Narrowband H-Alpha by AstroBin user Diego Cartes. Copyright Diego Cartes. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission. Tele Vue-76 APO refractor with Tele Vue TRF-2008 0.8x Reducer/Flattener (converts Tele Vue-76 to 380mm f/5) and ZWO ASI 1600MM Cooled Pro monochrome camera though ZWO 36mm H-alpha filter for 62×300″ for a total of 5.2-hours.

Tele Vue NEW for 2018: TV-60, TV-76, TV-85 OTAs & Accessory Packages

All Tele Vue telescopes now come standard as optical tube assemblies (OTA) that can be turned into “complete” units with optional, customized accessory packages. The package costs can be substantially less than pricing each component individually. This blog takes you through the changes for the Tele Vue-60, Tele Vue-76, and Tele Vue-85 models. Accessory packages for the larger scopes will be covered in a future blog.

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Countdown: Annular Solar Eclipse Feb. 26, 2017

TV-76 image of March 20, 2015 Solar Eclipse from Norway. J.M.Pasachoff.

After the penumbral eclipse of the new moon on February 11th, we have an Annular Solar Eclipse just a half-lunar-cycle later. Unlike the lunar eclipse, this one will need proper filtering to observe naked eye or through scopes. The eclipse is annular because only the central part of the sun is obscured, leaving a thin ring (annulus) of light around the edge. This happens because the moon’s orbit brings it closer and further from the earth — so its angular size from earth can vary from 29.4-arc-minutes to 33.5-arc-minutes. The size of the sun hardly varies from 32-arc-minutes due to the small eccentricity of the earth’s orbit. Thus, the moon can appear to be bigger or smaller than the sun according to the circumstances. Continue reading “Countdown: Annular Solar Eclipse Feb. 26, 2017”