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PlaneWave Instruments is pleased to offer the PW20-RC, a 20 inch (0.51 m) f/6.8 astrograph with Ritchey-Chrétien optics. PlaneWave’s CDK astrographs have become the telescopes of choice for universities, industry, and astrophotographers around the world, and now PlaneWave offers the PW-RC series to meet the custom needs of the scientific community.
The PW20-RC in its native format (no field flattening lenses) uses only a primary and secondary mirror with reflective coatings. This can be useful when making observations primarily on-axis and wide field imaging is not a concern.
The PW20-RC has a dual carbon-fibre truss design, with 3 cooling fans ejecting air from the back of the telescope. The instrument weight is 64 kg and comes standard with a back plate retaining ring ready to accept the focuser of your choice.
Features
- Carbon fibre tube minimizes thermal expansion, which causes focus shift as temperature changes during an imaging session. Carbon fibre also reaches ambient temperatures quickly and is extremely lightweight and rigid to help ensure excellent imaging data is produced.
- Dovetail Expansion Joint allows for the difference in thermal expansion between carbon fiber and aluminium. The expansion joint allows the aluminium dovetail to expand and contract without stressing the carbon fiber lower truss.
- Fused silica RC optics made by PlaneWave for excellent on-axis performance using only a hyperbolic primary and secondary mirror with no refractive optics in the light path.
- Three cooling fans blow out of the optical tube pulling air through the telescope and by the primary mirror. This helps the telescope to reach thermal equilibrium quickly. The fans are controlled by a switch on the optical tube, or can be controlled by via PWI3 software.
All PlaneWave telescopes feature the following ports for dew heater and fan management:
- Two RCA connectors to power the dew heater (from the Delta T or from a 12V source)
- One RJ connector for the Delta T to the telescope to transmit temperature data
- One EFA connector to power the fans (EFA to 5.5-2.1 jack included)
- One auxiliary output port
The built-in dew heaters can be powered by any 12V DC source which has an RCA connector, but the Delta T is required to keep the mirror just above the dew point to avoid overheating and the resulting internal turbulences.
The EFA connector can be powered by the separate EFA controller, any 12V DC source using the supplied EFA to 5.5 x 2.1 jack, or by the Series-5 controller.
