Any idea what’s going on with the optics in a carbon fiber SVX80(F6) running at a remote observatory? This happened across all three RGB filters with periods of round stars, then steady degradation of star shapes. Conditions at the remote observatory were not great but I have not seen deformed stars like this before. The example attached is a tight crop on a bright star in the frame (120 second exposures).
Bad Stars.jpg
How about something getting in the field of view during a session? Like a wire? Once I had a similar problem when imaging from my backayard and got a tip of the fence in my FOV. Or perhaps something might be just stuck in front of your lense at very edge and when the scope is moving, it suddenly drops in front of it…?
Seems like you were imaging through a ever narrowing slit or series thereof. Stars not only deform hugely but their magnitude drops considerably. Can’t think of an atmospheric phenomenon that could cause this.
This looks very much like when I track into trees in the winter. Enough light gets through to form an image but it’s much diminished and the branches cause crazy diffraction effects like I see in your example. What was the elevation when the problem kicked in?
I have a pretty clear field of view down to 15 degrees or less out at the remote telescope farm (roll off roofs) so I pretty sure that’s not the issue.
I saw the first hint of deformed stars at around midnight at altitude about 31 degrees before flipping at 33 degrees.
It is very hard to tell from the pier cam if a cable or something is falling across the objective, but I can see nothing obvious after opening and closing the flat panel. Next session (may be a while), I will keep an eye on the flip flat. Maybe for some strange reason, it partially closed.
📷 Capture_00001.jpg
It’s possible. All I can say for sure is something got into the light path.