Imaged with the Maksutov 180mm F/15, at full focal lenght of 2700mm !
New processing of M66
Using the F/15 Maksutov as an astrograph
The F/15, 2700mm focal length 18cm aperture Maksutov is never intended to capture deep-sky images. Instead it excell’s at planets and the Moon.
However, with this focal length, it makes sense to give it a try at small objects like galaxies.
This is what came out of it, as a test, stacking 40 subs of 300s at gain 0. That’s 3 hours and 20 minutes. The detail is ok, what I noticed are triangular stars so I need to take a look at the collimation, seems to tight.
Compared to what my C11 did with an ASI183mm RGB last year:
Testing the C11 without OAG
After cleaning & collimation, I tested the C11 with the Starizona F 7.2 reducer, the ASI183mm (way oversampled obviously), and guiding using a simple external 8×50 guider and the ASI290MC. Just as a test not bad. I’m not convinced the mirror shift did not have influence in this image. Focusing was a pain, needed to be done manually.
