A work in progress, rebuilding my Orion 500/f5.6 Maksutov (David Redwine)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: Bode's Galaxy · Cigar Galaxy · M 81 · M 82 · NGC 3031 · NGC 3034 · NGC 3077

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A work in progress, rebuilding my Orion 500/f5.6 Maksutov

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A work in progress, rebuilding my Orion 500/f5.6 Maksutov

Way back in the 1990's I bought an Orion 500mm/f 5.6 Maksutov to use as a camera lens. It performed great for many years, but on the way home from the 2017 Eclipse the O-ring at the back of the tube slipped out. I stuffed the O-ring back in but the scope wouldn't focus so I took the back off and replaced the O-ring. I've spent many, many hours trying to get this thing collimated, but Mak's are hard to collimate from scratch. Finally I bought an artificial star and after a few hours I have it close.

While I was shooting M81 the other night I decided to grab a few frames with the Mak to see how bad it was. Most of the collimation distortion is in the blue channel so this is a cropped RGG image of M81, M82 and NGC 3077.

This should help motivate me to finish the collimation job.

Final
Original
B
C
D

B

Description: The latest star (Sirius) test of the Mak. APT's autostrech made this look perfect so I stopped, but looking at it carefully this morning there is more work to do. The "doughnut" is a little thin in the 2 o'clock region.

I did take another astrophoto, which showed lots of coma. I think this "camera lens Mak" will need a coma corrector.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: Latest star test, May 3, 2020, using an Astrozap artificial star.

The Canon/T2 adapter I was using was tilted so I tried a different one and the image is much improved.

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: The region near Spica. Single 180s sub.

Significant coma is still present.

Uploaded: ...

Central USA
Imaged with APT
Maksutov imaging

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3331501
PixInsight job	JWX4TQLWHPLSWCMWX7UGJOO8C96AEVAA
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	09h57m25s.51
RA (top/left)	09h49m23s.51
RA (top/right)	09h54m42s.78
RA (bottom/right)	10h05m05s.15
RA (bottom/left)	10h00m21s.32

Dec (center)	+69°03′42″.7
Dec (top/left)	+69°35′08″.5
Dec (top/right)	+68°12′50″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+68°30′52″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	+69°54′19″.7

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A work in progress, rebuilding my Orion 500/f5.6 Maksutov

A work in progress, rebuilding my Orion 500/f5.6 Maksutov

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A work in progress, rebuilding my Orion 500/f5.6 Maksutov

A work in progress, rebuilding my Orion 500/f5.6 Maksutov

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