Hi All,
I checked out the AstroTech 10" Ritchey Chrétien (AT10RC) telescope from the Club Store. The scope was missing extension rings and the 12v battery pack for the cooling fans on the rear mirror cell. The cooling fans are not needed to use the scope. If you know that they can affect your pictures, then you should buy a power pack to run them – if you don’t have one already.
I purchased 3 extension rings (2 - 2" rings and 1 - 1" ring), which I will check in with the telescope for the next person that wants to use it. The extension rings are necessary to provide sufficient back focus. The 3 rings will allow the use of a TeleVue 2.5x with astro-camera. The telescope has a 2000 mm focal length and does not come with a mount. It is steel and weighs 32 lbs with the extension rings and focuser. I recommend a 60 to 80 lb mount if you wish to use the scope.
I collimated the telescope and took some pictures from my backyard on the west side of Moore. I use these pictures to evaluate its performance - Star Shot, The Moon, the Dumbbell Nebula, Mars, and Saturn. You can decide for yourselves, but I believe that the telescope is now adequately collimated for general use.
Star Field Near Polaris:
The Star Field shot is from a ZWO-183 color camera. The raw image, near Polaris, was taken on a “parked” mount. It is a 30 second exposure using a gain of 270.
Moon:
The Moon image is of the Apollo 11 Landing Site (center of frame). It is also a raw image and was taken using the TeleVue 2.5x extender with a Nikon D5600 camera at 400 ISO with an exposure of 1/100 of a second.
Dumbbell Nebula - Messier 27:
The Dumbbell Image is from an unguided stack of subs taken with the TeleVue Extender by a ZWO-183 color cooled astro-camera. The stack is a 22 minute integration using 22 subs with a 60s exposure and 0 gain. It was processed in PixInsight with appropriate darks and flats.
Mars:
The Mars Image is an PIPP>AutoStakkert>Registax image stack taken by a Nikon d5600. The image stack used the TeleVue Extender and was created from a live view movie recording at 400 ISO and shutter rate of 500 frames per second.
Saturn:
Saturn is an HDR Image from two image stacks using the TeleVue and taken by a Nikon d5600
- Body and Rings from 13 subs at 800 ISO and 0.005s exposure, and
- Moons from 11 subs at 26500 ISO and 0.1s exposure
It was processed mostly in PixInsight using PixelMath. The poor quality does not represent the telescope’s potential.
I will be checking the telescope back into the Club Store on Saturday (June 21) and it will be available for others to use.