I took the plunge in December and bought a William Optics FLT132 for Christmas. The weather has been terrible, so I only managed to take it outside this week. M1 is the first of two targets I managed to acquire with this telescope after some trial and error attempting to balance this (very large) telescope on the AM5 mount and TC40 carbon fibre tripod. In the end, I managed to balanced it using a 1.8Kg counterweight on the AM5 mount and a 10Kg dumbbell on the tripod. Even with these weights, the overall guiding error shot up over 1 and 2 with some gusts of wind (about 20mph winds). Without wind, the AM5 mount managed to get low overall guiding error between 0.5 and 0.8 which is pretty good.
I chose M1 as my first target as it's a small nebula and I could compare with a previous image I took with the FLT91. See the FLT91 version here
The Crab Nebula (M1, w/ WO FLT91) I'll upload several versions of this image, in HOO and in simulated SHO palette. I'll also soon upload the other image I acquired with the FLT132 when I get a chance to process the data.
Thanks for looking and clear skies.
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