The Gemini Telescopes SnapCap in turn, is bulkier. Its motor is attached to your telescope aperture, with the cap attached to the motor via a metallic arm, fixed with two bolts. The SnapCap comes with the PC control box unit, which takes 12 V power and USB connections (for power and control, respectively). Aside from this, the SnapCap also comes with a small inverter for the flat field panel. The flat field panel has a thin cable coming out of its side. This is connected to the small inverter. The PC control box is then connected to the motor and to the 12 V power and computer via USB, as aforementioned. A little more convoluted and bulky than the Alnitak Flip-Flat but having separate 12 V power allows Gemini Telescopes to make these devices for bigger apertures as the motors and flat field panels can be made bigger and more powerful.
My worry with the Altair Astro 8" RC was collimation. I had heard horror stories about how difficult it was to collimate a Ritchey-Chretien telescope, although these videos by Stephen Kirk were tremendously helpful. The videos were the reason I bought the focuser tilting plate and Howie Glatter Laser Collimator (with the concentric circles attachment). The instructions were simple:
1. Using the Howie Glatter Laser Collimator with the spot attachment, tweak the focuser tilting plate screws to centre the laser spot on the centre spot of the secondary mirror (looking into the telescope).
Given the lack of break in the cloud cover, I was not able to fully test the collimation while at e-EyE. Thankfully, the other night it cleared and I was able to capture a 15-minute test image of M51 Whirlpool Galaxy in Luminance.
I used the exposure to measure the effective focal length of the telescope by uploading the exposure to Astrometry.net. The plate solver measured the pixel scale to be 0.588 arcseconds/pixel, which leads to a focal length of 1592 mm and focal ratio of f/7.84. I could use the Astro-Physics CCDT67 Telecompressor to reduce this by a maximum factor of 0.67x but I honestly prefer to keep it at its native focal length to get higher imaging resolution. I can certainly spare the imaging time!
The following are two photographs of the completed installation.