Interesting points Stefan.
Yes, this is turning into a bit of a Mak love-fest...
A bucket of cold water is a good thing.
Had you insulated your Mak?
The thermal issue is a very real one as you say. Letting closed-tube Cats cool is a confounded problem, with the largest of Cats just refusing to play nice, especially when big temperature differentials exist between starting temp and the ambient temp however much time later. Unless the scope is kept in a cold room, there will always be thermal issues with closed-tube Cats. We've been forcing closed-tube Cats to cool in attempt to force them to behave more like open tube scopes and even refractors. Maybe closed-tube Cats require a different thermal approach.
A few questions are brought up this way. Why are Maks not popular for photo? Thermal issues? Expense? Bad press? Being Russian in origin? Ignorance? I for one had avoided Maks for many years for many reasons: of following a perceived East vs West thing: being so exotic I didn't trust them: seeing that Maks were just about totally shunned in the popularity stakes of scopes: their very slow focal ratio vs the faster and faster trend: price may have been a big factor influencing this. Ignorance though is the one common factor in all of the above other than price. I certainly have changed my opinion about Maks.
Why has this visual quality not translated into photo as suggested? But there are some people who are using Maks, and large Maks at that, for some very high quality lunar and planetary photography. English language forums are the worst representatives for Mak photography too!!!
Insulating closed-tube Cats has made a big difference, especially for Maks. Open tube scopes are a totally different thermal proposition. But with this change in now insulating Maks, maybe it will see a return to Maks for photo? Maybe Maks, and SCT's, needed a different take way of dealing with their thermal characteristics, to which the traditional "cooling" ones are not best practice for them. And insulating them is the trick to slow their cooling rather than forcing a cooling process. This requires a BIG change in the conventional thinking about how to deal with heat in scopes, and how many people will be willing to accept a change in thinking?