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Mak M13


JamesF

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For kicks and giggles last night whilst I was waiting for the Moon to climb above the roof of the barn I swung my 127 Mak over to Hercules and ran a few capture runs on M13 with my (unmodded) 450D. Perhaps not the best of targets given that area of the sky was clearly affected by glare from the Moon, but it was one I knew I could find easily with the Mak. The OTA is mounted on an old Skysurfer 2001 EQ3-2 with the aftermarket motor drives and aluminium tripod (which no longer has stones in the eyepiece tray since I found some old weights from a long-case clock to replace them) and there's no guiding or anything like that so I wasn't expecting miracles. Sure enough I had to throw away perhaps as many as half of the subs that had been affected by "wobbles", but I managed enough to stack, so here it is.

m13-2-final.png

12 subs of 45 seconds plus darks, unmodded 450D & 127 Mak, stacked with DSS and tweaked with Photoshop.

James

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Great result James. You could try reducing individual exposures a little and go for more subs, that may help with the success rate?

I did have a run of 30 second exposures, but they didn't seem to be a huge amount better. I think the mount is perhaps just showing its age.

James

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Amazing considering the kit used :)

Not the most suitable choice of imaging gear, I admit, but it was all set up and a bit of practice with focusing and so on never did anyone any harm. It looks like the sort of target that would lend itself to long focal length imaging, but a better mount and guiding are probably desirable :)

James

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James, you have done extremely well to get such a pleasant image with the mount and mak, be proud of that, i see on abs there is a HEQ5 going at a rather good price near you

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nice one!

would like to see m81/82 with it :grin:

I'll see if I can give it a go next time we have a clear night. Unfortunately the field of view will be insufficient to fit them both in the same frame. I think the DSLR sensor can cover a patch of sky about 0.5 x 0.85 degrees and they're about a degree apart.

James

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