Calling all Stellar Mira 90mm owners

[Anthonyexmouth]

Can any owners tell me their lines and dislikes of this scope, also any mods they feel might be a priority or ones that would be nice to have. 

I'm very very tempted to get one

Cheers

[Clarkey]

I got my SM 90mm just before new year (and the price increase). Although at this point I was largely using my longer FL scopes for galaxy imaging, I did use the SM a few times. In most areas I think it is excellent. It is well made with a focuser that works for AP - most of my other scopes have not been so good. The made-to-measure flattener reducer is also excellent. Optically it is also very good with no visible CA.

My only question with it is the cooling. I set it up along side my ED80 on my dual rig (first and only use so far) and the SM focus drifted way more than the ED80 which stayed pretty constant. As I put my scopes out in plenty of time, the only reason I can see for this is cooling of the optics being very slow. I will be trying it again soon with the new season starting so I can see if will always be a potential problem. If you are using it on its own with an auto-focuser I would not hesitate to get one (especially if you can get one of the ex-demo models cheap).

These images are using the SM90. The top one is LRGB plus Ha - something like 8 hours total integration using the F4.8 flattener. The second was a combination of ED80 with a Canon 600D plus Luminance with the SM90. The final image was the SM90 only at F6 using the SM flattener. I did not use any star reduction on these images so you can make your own decision on how 'good' the stars are. To be honest the processing was fairly minimal -as was the set up. On the last image the flattener probably needed to be moved out a fraction, but on the California nebula it was plug and play.

Edited August 3, 2022 by Clarkey

[Anthonyexmouth]

Looks very nice indeed, and sound like you approve. I run a side by side ed80/294mc with st80/120mm for guiding. My plan is to swap the st80 for the sm90/294 and use the ed80 for mixed use guiding and lunar with either 120mm or 290mc for those annoying moonlit nights. 

My credit card is gonna hate me. 

[Clarkey]

5 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

My credit card is gonna hate me

Mine stopped talking to me years ago.🤣

 

6 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

sound like you approve

Definitely. Excellent scope for the money.

[Anthonyexmouth]

Upside is I'll lose some weight not being able to afford to eat. 

[Clarkey]

1 minute ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

not being able to afford to eat

Look on the bright side - you can save the money by turning off your heating while you are outside imaging in the winter. Every cloud....😁