Uranium235

I'd be interested to see how you get on with this. It is possible to flock the sides of a secondary, but you would have to be super-careful not to get any adhesive on the mirror surface.

Rubber gloves usually do the trick, but I try to prevent it ever happening now by firstly using boot polish - and avioding the overtightening of adaptors in the first place. The very worst case I had was solved by hacksawing two notches in one of the threads, then using a flat tool (inserted into the slots) to twist it free.

Time to see if the 130 and Star71 can play nicely together on the Beehive.... Got the 130 doing lum and the 71 filling in the colour with the DSLR at ISO400: Been a bit naughty... absolutely no flats or other calibration frames

Darn it... I missed that monster sunspot, probably because I was working or otherwise engaged.

Its been a while since I last used the 130, but yes it does appear to improve the contrast and seems to have made my flats more accurate since light isnt bouncing around inside the OTA and bypassing the mirrors. No shedding either.

No need to move it, just post the image in this thread

130pds back out of (temporary) retirement!

Yep, its got a sort of rubber flexibility about it. I used up a bit more tonight and made a new dewshiield, looks pretty good now I have two correctors for this telescope, the Baader MkIII - and the SWCC, which also acts as a 0.89x reducer (+/- .2 depending on spacing). My SWCC has been butchered (lol) with a hacksaw to remove the stop collar, it now happily sits within the drawtube so I actually gain backfocus. As long as I've got the spacing right and dont point it at any bright stars it should be ok - especially in Ha (where bright stars pose no problem).

This is the stuff I used: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/misc/black-velour-telescope-flocking-material.html The primary mirror is probably the easiest thing to remove (I gave mine a good clean too). The focuser also needs to come off, as well as the finder shoe - but the biggest concern are the spider vanes as you need to find a method of re-centreing them when you put them back. What I did was to get a piece of card and make a circle exactly the same circumfrence as the OTA inside, then punch a hole in the middle - and once re-installed all I needed to do was line the centre screw up with the hole in the card. Other difficulties are actually getting your arm in there to smooth down the flocking, 5" doesnt give you a lot of room to move about so take it easy and get as many air bubbles out along the way as you can. The last half an hour was spent shifting air bubbles and using spare flocking to make a new bottom cover for the telescope. Other new parts include a T2-2" dovetail adaptor which includes an M48 thread. I thought I would give it a go so I can see if its any better than my exisiting all threaded connection. Inital tests show that it rivals the holding power, thanks to the dovetail connection - as when the three thumbscrews are tightened up - if forces the adaptor downwards (and therefore tight against the pushfit adaptor).... no slipping or slop. The advantage being that I can adjust the camera angle with ease (which isnt the case with my current setup). One other thing of note was while I cleaned the primary I took a look at the mirror clips - they seemed to be gripping the mirror (maybe) a little too tightly so I back off one or two of the screws. First thought was "blimey.... how tight are these?!!" - they were done up as far at they will go! So i got a few rizla papers and backed off the clips until I could get a paper in, after which I gave each a tiny tighten up just enough so its enough to hold it without any danger of movement.... whether it improves the performance (or not), I wont know until its tested. Hoping for some clear sky this weekend so I can give it a go - running at 580mm / f4.4... nice

Pimping up the 130pds ready for short summer nights: Before flocking: (scattered light all over the shop) Flocked: (now blacker than a miners black bits!) apart from the strip up the middle where the tube seam is.

Looks bang-on now. Leave it there! As for exposure times, as long as you can manage really (or as long as the camera can handle without getting too much thermal noise... 5-10min each should do it).

Yep, just twist the camera so the bottom of it is parallel to the focuser knobs (for portrait), or exactly 90o either way for landscape. Either way its best done indoors before you take the scope out, otherwise its tricky to get it right in the dark. And once its done - leave it in place so subsequent sessions dont suffer from camera rotation (ie: losing FOV to stacking artefacts) - and it means you can use the same flats on all your data.

Without knowing the focal length you shot this with its difficult to determine your FOV, however what you need to do is put M86 into the centre of your field, then move it to the right a bit. That should get you most of the chain. You also need to rotate your camera by 90o. Here is what you get with a dslr and a 650mm FL newt: The galaxy in the centre of your image is M84.

It will be roughly the same distance as a DSLR since the spacing from the CC is exactly the same.

You just need to be aware that a larger secondary may give rise to unwanted diffraction effects. But give it a try, you have nothing to lose!

Twisted vanes only affect bright stars, smaller ones are unaffected. However, as mentioned - something may be protuding into the lightpath. But my money is on the spider vanes.