I recently got a TOA-130NFB, and finally got a single night of clear skies. Weather here in Texas has not been great. But I've put myself under the gun to get this telescope tested because I've finally decided to host this system remotely after almost two years of trying to get my own observatory off the ground with little to no progress thanks to flaky contractors and eventually increased inflation causing prices to skyrocket. I figure that a year of hosting will get me some experience and awesome images while I wait for costs to come down to do my own thing.
A bit about acquiring this image. I got the 645 flattener with this system and had only looked at the system chart for the TOA-130 itself which shows one of the various flatteners setup. I couldn't come to focus at first with the draw tube fully extended. But I found I had a single spacer which could increase the draw tube distance to reach focus, but it's still at the max length of the draw tube which I don't think is great. Looking finally at the 645 flattener diagram from Takahashi and it shows you need two extension rings. So I'll have to pick up another from Takahashi American which is just down the street from me.
Once I started imaging I noticed some haze in the images, not only was seeing pretty poor with an average of 4 FWHM, but we've had our pool heater on and with the cool weather steam was coming off the pool right in the area where I was imaging.
Despite all that, the detail in the few hours I captured is amazing. While the overall image isn't super great, the resolution and detail is beyond what I had captured a few years ago on my
RC6 with ASI1600 camera.
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