Jupiter June 4th

[ronnierigel]

Hi all

thought I'd share my efforts using the saxon 8 inch Maksutov/cassegrain on a LXD55 mount, Toucam 840 no barlow nor filters from Melbourne.

Happy with the efforts although I am still searching for that sharpness I've observed from others on this forum!

enjoy

ron

[iceman]

nice attempts!

What's the focal length of your scope?

[Lester]

Hi Ron,

Well you are on your way.

[ronnierigel]

Thanks for the replies

The focal length is 2400mm (f12)

I tried imaging with a 2.8 barlow but image always too soft---probably pushing it under the circumstances. A 2X barlow may be a beter option for this scope.

regards ron

[Lester]

Hi Ron,

I wouldn't try a barlow until, you can achieve sharp images at Prime Focus. The barlow will only magnify the unsharpness. Quite often when images are posted they are made smaller to hide any unsharpness not made larger unless the oringinal is very sharp.

[Robert_T]

Hi ron, I've been waiting to see how one of these 8inch Maks perform on planetary. Some good detail here, you certainly should be able to use the 2.8 barlow when seeing etc allows.

Collimation is of course critical to get fine detail. For a Mak of this size though getting it to ambinet temp is likley to be as big a problem as poor seeing. The thick glass really slows cooling. WIth my SCT I need at least an hour to get near ambient... you can double this or more for a Mak unless you have some form of active cooling system (fans, peltiers etc). This really does have an enormous impact so worth putting some thought into.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your shots. Well done!