Flat at last

After my bad experience with the field flattener I bought for the Megrez 88 I was very hesitant at throwing any more money at the problem and settled for using the Baader coma corrector which is optimised for my Newtonian. It was much better than nothing but a fair way from being perfect. I'd read that the German TS flattener was producing excellent results on a variety of refractors from f.5 to f.7 and, though quite expensive, looked the safest way to go. After a bit of a deep breath I ordered one from Ian King Imaging which promptly arrived. Although the weather isn't very encouraging at present and the town's Christmas lights are preventing any serious attempts at imaging I had to do a quick test to see whether yet more money had been wasted. It was therefore a huge relief when the first experimental image showed almost perfect stars in the corners of the image. A bit of fine tuning regarding the distance of the flattener to the camera is probably required for absolute perfection but that can wait for a warmer evening!