After spending a few months imaging with my robotic observatory on the mountains of southern Spain, where the skies are dark and usually clear, I thought I’d start giving some real work to my 10Micron GM2000 mount.
It’s a beast capable of carrying payloads up to 50 kg, so my SkyWatcher 80ED was rather puny on top of it.
I have purchased a second-hand Simak 240, manufactured by Costruzioni Ottiche Zen, and due to bad weather and a series of, let’s say, circumstances, it’s been a while until I could get first light through it.
We’re talking about a 250 mm (10”) Maksutov-Cassegrain, with a focal length of 1350 mm.
Unfortunately, there were some mishaps during collimation, and I’m now left with some pinching on one of the mirrors that I hope will be fixed soon.
As I write, Nerpio’s skies look like this:
I have programmed an imaging session in CCD Commander that will take 10-minute subs on M33 and M81, and the first one just came in, so have a look:
As you can see, the focus is not perfect, because, I assume, FocusMax has trouble with badly collimated optics, and the stars show a triangular shape.
But all in all, it looks like I’m off to a good start and I’ll take some really nice image in 2013!