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Thanks Brett,
Yes, all the work in building the 200mm Newtonian (18 months spare time) as well as all the work building an observatory to house it (another 2 years of spare time). The Paramount actually spent most of the first two years after I bought it sitting in its box!
Thanks Alex,
You might be surprised to know the mirror is a cheapie "made in China" 200mm f6. Since the seeing is typically at least 2 arc secs, it just has to be better than that - the Paracorr does the rest of the work correcting coma, etc. Also alignment is critical - the camera still isn't perfectly square yet and I can detect some slight elongation in some of the corners.
As for the tracking, the 47 Tucanae subs were all at 240 secs (4 minutes). Actually, I did do a few single jpeg frames a couple of weeks ago to test the tracking. I did a 5 minute image where the stars were slightly elongated, and a 10 minute image where they were definite eggs. It may be possible to take a sequence of many images though and cherry pick the good ones. I found that all the 47 Tuc images were quite good, so I guess I can easily push above the 4 minute mark.
Yes, the M20 image definitely needs some more colour, and probably a bit more for the M8 would be good as well. Although, I do like the colours to be a little more "natural" than many others might - it would be interesting to hear all the different views on this.
Regards,
David
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