First light with skywatcher mak 180 pro

[Kuz]

finally managed to con the wife into letting me buy a long focal length scope for planets and hopefully some solar . More than impressed looking at the moon visually it was super clean. However my first couple of images were rubbish, I have take way better images with my phone through an eyepiece on my 12 inch dob.

I was rushed a my wife had other things planned for me , ( can't complain got 6 straight nights in just recently when there was no moon. )



Images are take with zwo 120 mini and zwo 224 MC . All at .005 of a sec . No processing has been done as you can tell

I can't wait to give Jupiter and Saturn a go .

I was just happy to actually find the moon. As I didn't even do a polar alignment.
whole new ball game with planet imaging. Hope in the next few months I will be able to post something half decent

Thanks

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Well Kuz, I guess that's a start. You'll get better images if you shoot video and stack the best frames. The Maksutov 180 will be great for the planets and adding a 2x barlow to it's 2700mm native focal length will give you a focal ratio of about f30. Look forward to see what you will be able to do.

[Rerouter (Ryan)]

I would be suprised if a barlow got much more detail without a lot of stacking, F/15 is pretty much bang on diffraction limiting if you have pixels around 4 micron,

I do love my Mak's however it doesnt hurt to star test them, both of mine are impressively out of collumation, to the point where I can tell from the front, after a few feild trips along not too smooth roads, (one is 6x worse than diffraction limited, the other is 8x worse from optical test charts), and am spending tonight with an artifical star trimming them in.

[Startrek (Martin)]

Kuz,
Glad you have decided to dabble in planetary imaging and you can only improve from these initial test images
Essentially “lucky imaging” using video files AVI or other types is the only way to image the Mars , Jupiter and Saturn. The Moon still works well with “Lucky Imaging” particularly at high resolution but sometimes you can snag a good image of the moon in wider field with a single image if conditions are stable

Focal Ratios for Lunar and Planetary Imaging are super important

General rule of thumb to determine the “best focal ratio” of your image train for Lunar and Planetary imaging is -
Poor night of seeing 3.5 x pixel size of your camera
Average night of seeing 5 x pixel size of your camera
Good night of seeing 7 x pixel size of your camera

I use my old Canon 600D and Televue Powermates in my newts to achieve suitable focal lengths ( anywhere from f15 to f30 ) I use BYEOS in planetary mode for my planetary imaging. I’m happy with results I achieve with my DSLR and Powermates and haven’t bothered to advance with planetary equipment. I tend to spend more money on DSO imaging

Some stacking and processing software which are popular worldwide and produce great planetary images are Autostakkert 3 and Registax 6 and both are a free download

There’s plenty of folk to assist in this area of our hobby

Some images attached of my planetary work last year with the DSLR

Good luck and enjoy this great form of Astro imaging

Martin