DSO Imaging with a 127 Mak

It’s often said that slow focal ratio telescopes are unsuitable for DSO imaging and in the general case I’d probably agree. However, having seen a few other imaging attempts with a 127 Mak I thought it might be interesting to give it a whirl and see how well I could do if I chose my targets carefully enough.

At the tail end of May Messier 13 was well-placed in the sky, so with my 127 Mak on its EQ3-2 with dual motors and my Canon 450D I had my first go. In terms of time spent I can’t claim it was a major success. Even with thirty second exposures I ended up having to throw away about half of them due to trailing stars, but from the fifteen or so left I managed the following image:

m13-2-final

Better tracking is required for better and less noisy images, but that’s probably not going to be easy with an EQ3-2.

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