Hoegaarden Astronomy & Photography
It has been a few years, but this time I could visit the fair again. And it was a real treat, with lots a people and lots of enthousiasm, telescopes, optics, materials. Click on the picture for more pictures!
I purchased a brand new SkyWatcher Maksutov back in 2010, as a first scope after many many years of inactivity. Eventually I sold it to replace it with the C11.
However, the sharp and crisp planetary and Moon images, the great visual experience of this scope, the stability of the collimation, kept on haunting my scope addiction.
So it was a great day yesterday when I could re-purchase the same scope after 9 years.
And what a beautiful edge-on sprial galaxy this is! I made almost 3 hrs of 120-second frames with the ASI183mm Pro and the Esprit. Then I combined the resulting monochrome (Black/White) image with the older C11/Nikon D750 color frames I had from last year. This process included debayering of the color frames into a Red, Green and Blue version. And again recombining an LRGB with the monochrome and RGB frames. Finishing in APP (Background neutralisation, removing Lightpollution ) and in Photoshop.
