This Antares 1.25" 0.5x focal reducer lens (tele-compressor) is used under the Orion brand name to thread into the nosepiece of Orion StarShoot Solar System cameras and StarShoot Deep Space Color Imaging Camera. It can also be used with any other small chip CCD camera having a 1.25" nosepiece, such as the Celestron NexImage, Meade DSI, etc. It is an inexpensive way to more than double the field of view and halve the photographic magnification of such cameras.
This allows you to image more of the lunar surface in a single exposure for more dramatic views of our nearest solar system neighbor and gives you four times the sky area in your deep space Images. The reducer is not recommended for planetary imaging, as it will make the disc of the planet smaller, which is usually the reverse of what you are trying to accomplish when imaging a small and distant planet.
The Antares reducer will also work with any CCD camera using a 1.25" nosepiece that is threaded for 1.25" filters. It will work with both solar system (lunar/planetary) imagers and deep space imagers. It effectively reduces the focal length of the telescope by half with all CCD cameras. This increases the area imaged by your camera by a factor of 4.
The larger imaging area allows you to capture larger star fields and deep-sky objects that may not normally fit entirely onto your deep space camera's imaging CCD. With the StarShoot II Solar System camera (and other lunar/planetary imagers), it effectively changes the image size recorded by the camera from the equivalent of that seen through a 6mm eyepiece to that of a 12mm eyepiece. This permits wider field imaging of the Moon (as well as imaging the sun, if you use the proper solar filter over the objective of your scope).
The Antares reducer uses a two-element achromatic lens, with antireflection coatings on all air-to-glass lens surfaces for maximum light transmission. The lenses are set in an anodized aluminum cell that is threaded to accept 1.25" filters. The Antares reducer requires 43mm of additional inward focus travel when used with the Orion StarShoot II Solar System Camera and 52mm of inward focus travel when used with the Orion StarShoot Deep Space Color Imaging Camera II.
