Ad Astra Observatory

I’m having trouble getting the G11/SCT combo to work shooting to the East, for some reason.

So, I decided to “make lemonade” and shoot to the West instead. This neatly avoids the rising 3rd-quarter moon (which was irritatingly high in the sky in Taurus tonight), and also gives me a chance to compare Veronica’s efforts with those of the new telescope (need to come up with a name at some point…).

So here’s a 1-hour integration (30×2min) with the f/10 scope.

The image is noticeably magnified, which is nice. The stars have lost their diffraction spikes, of course. And it seems like the f/10 scope isn’t going to be the burden on my photography that I worried about (in theory, exposures need to be 4x longer at f/10 than at f/5).

Probably worth another shot or two, just to see if I can pull out some more detail.