RASA 8 Optical glass in our out with the Starizona filter drawer

A debated topic regarding the RASA 8 and the primary glass. Should the glass be removed or kept in?
We are now going to discuss this and see if it is worth removing it or keeping it.
Some pointers before going further:
This is based on the Starizona filter drawer only!
The filter holder, which is a separate device for the RASA requires you to remove the glass in question.

Several tests/ experiments have been completed to find out if the clear glass on the RASA is required in the back focus train when using the Starizona filter drawer. A lot of people have been debating if it should be removed or kept due to the clashing of information from Starizona and Celestron.

Celestron says to remove it, while Starizona says to keep it in. This of course has confused people. Let’s find out if this is the case, or if it even matters.

Leaving aside all of the issues the RASA has had in the past – the requirement of the piece of glass which is no more than 1-2mm in the back focus train is a concern since the speed of the scope itself. Since it is an F2 system, the back focus is very precise and being 1-2mm out can have large effects on the picture.

Since the good old British weather isn’t the most reliable for clear skies – this experiment was taken over a few weeks. The target was SH2-117 (also known as NGC 7000 and IC 5070 – North America Nebula and Pelican Nebula respectively) I aimed at these targets for several reasons. A 2-panel mosaic would show a lot of detail and I would have multiple options if it was needed to do single target comparisons. Also because this is a favourite location for me (Why not!? This is a well-known target, and the pictures are jaw-dropping)

The night was a 90% full moon which was situated on the opposite side of the sky (one of the other reasons to do a Narrowband target) and the second night, a few weeks later, was on a new moon ~1-2%.
The first night I was able to capture just over 1 hour 15 mins on each target as the night was clear all night, being springtime in the UK the nights are getting shorter, making it difficult to get a decent amount of data (not really a problem for an F2 system though). This was made worse the next time because we are getting closer to the summer solstice (the longest day of the year) each day that passes. The second night was clear till roughly 01:30 when an extremely large cloud waddled over.

The comparison in this video is on the IC 5070 - The Pelican Nebula. 45 mins total data @ 2 minutes exposures.


https://www.deepskyphotography.co.uk/...
  / deepsky-photography-113576717999239  

It was stacked with Deep Sky stacker and processed with Pixinsight.

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