MarkAR

Excellent images, well done.

Wow, that's a super little DSO.

Very nice, good star colour and core definition.

Lovely capture, the HH does look unusual.

Was going to do similar to mine but found some old hard rubber like material, cut a donut washer from it and it works fine.

Could it be image tilt?

Might be possible to split the shield and solder a strip in to make it bigger.

That's brought it out much better.

Looks like there might be some decent data hiding behind all those stars. Try some star reduction, it should bring out the nebulosity a bit better.

Unless the leather is rotted I would clean and treat it to revitalise it. Laquer may or may not be a good idea for the brass, if it was something special I would have considered gold plating to save constant polishing. Good luck with the search for a suitable lens replacement, would be ideal to get the right size but if not I might be able to machine something to make another lens fit. Could be possible to make something for either a target or smaller lens.

Very good, especially without guiding.

Nice job.

I would try stacking the before and after meridian flip separately to see what happens.

Not familiar with your particular scope but the eyepiece clamp on the focus tube should unscrew, the reducer screw on in its place. Either that or you need a 2" eyepiece tube to clamp it in.

Interesting stuff, makes the Mesu seem like a masterpiece of engineering being able to hold 4 times it's own weight.

Could be coma. It's so slight that you only really see it zoomed in.

Half hour ! That's a great image for such a short time. Loving the purple/ copper combo.

Excellent images, well done.

I use Kstars/Ekos, Polar alignment is the first step. I can get to less than 10 seconds or error. Then when you goto a target, use the align module to slew and sync. It plate solves what the camera sees and then adjusts to the target. Polar Alignment gets your mount pointing to the right place, star alignment/ plate solving gets your telescope pointed to the right place.

Lovely image. I don't often pixel peep but it looked like some hot red pixels were showing, turns out to be stars but i did notice a slight elongation of the stars in the corners. I think your camera may be a smidge too close.

Looks good to me.

Very nice. Picked up the really faint outer nebulosity as well.

Lovely, reminds me that there is a great big ball of fire up there. Haven't seen it myself for a while.☁️💧💧

That's probably the cleanest starless image I've ever seen, looks stunning.

Lovely image, nebula is really crisp but can't help noticing a little star elongation top left. You might have a slight tilt in the image train.