First test of the Carl Zeiss Mirotar 500 mm F/8

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Had a quick test of the Carl Zeiss Mirotar I got some time ago as a compact telephoto for imaging the sun in white light during the upcoming eclipse in Texas.

As the moon and Jupiter were peeping through the clouds, I quickly set the little telephoto on a tripod with the Canon EOS M6 Mk-II attached. I managed a couple of exposures with manual focus, before the clouds interfered. I will stack them tomorrow, but here is a crop of an unprocessed single frame.

I hope to do a better test with the ASI183MM attached on a tracking mount, but that will have to wait for better weather.

[Planetary Observer]

Looks like you could end up with a good image once all the frames are stacked.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Here is a stack of some 25 images made in Affinity Photo, sharpened in Registax 6. Not brilliant, but there is some promise here. I don't think I nailed focus (had to use the focus aid of the EOS M6 Mk-II rather than use a Bahtinov mask on the stars to get perfect focus). I hope I can test the lens on the HEM15 mount with ASI183MC soon

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Some tweaks of curves in  Gimp added

[astrolulu]

Hello Michael. If I can give you any advice - first try to reduce the size of the image to the smallest one that does not result in the loss of the smallest details, and only then sharpen the image.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

On 29/01/2024 at 18:04, astrolulu said:

Hello Michael. If I can give you any advice - first try to reduce the size of the image to the smallest one that does not result in the loss of the smallest details, and only then sharpen the image.

Better still, get better data and better focus (using a proper planetary camera)

[ollypenrice]

Wouldn't your Sigma telephoto beat this easily? Not as portable, though.

Olly

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Wouldn't your Sigma telephoto beat this easily? Not as portable, though.

Olly

Not sure about that, and anyway, I cannot take that to the USA in my hand luggage and carry the APM 80mm F/6. I find what I am getting so far is close to or better than my DSLR shots with the Canon 100-400mm L lens. I will test this on white-light solar when weather allows. My 100-400mm gave me pretty decent results on the eclipse in 2017 in white light, as the crop below shows, so I am not too worried about the quality of this little lens.

[ollypenrice]

This makes sense.

I only tried my 100-400L once on the moon but I was pretty impressed. This was hand held, braced against the side of the house.

Olly