The APM M63 Tilt Adjuster is designed for use with the M63 Riccardi 0.75x Reducer. It is low profile with an optical thickness of only 11mm.
Tilters solve one of the most common problems encountered in astrophotography, where after accurate focusing, in one or two corners the stars are not pinpoints. Often, the sharpness of the image is compromise to a level that the image has to be cropped.
Some possible causes of this problem are:
- a tilted camera sensor (fraction of a millimetre are enough)
- a tilted focuser
- a tilted focal plane of the telescope (common in Newtonian telescopes)
- tilted optical accessories by imprecise clamping
As solution, a tilter can re-establish the parallelism between elements and therefore the stars in the corners of your image will appear sharp.
The best way is to calibrate it is using test images:
- Identify the corner of your photo which has unsharp / aberrated stars.
- Loosen the 3 pull screws.
- Slightly turn the push screws in correspondence of for the corner of the photo that is unsharp.
- Take a second image. If the sharpness has deteriorated, turn the adjustment screw in the other direction until all 4 corners of your photos has the same sharpness.
- Tighten the pull screws.
