Having now owned and used six different deep-sky rigs, I've often wondered how their performances compare to each other. I'm just an unfrozen cave man lawyer, not a scientist or an expert on optics. But for my own edification, I thought it would be useful to see what it would be like to shoot solid images of the same target with all six scopes. I no longer own the ZenithStar 61, so I had to dig into my archives to see whether I had data from it applicable to this project. Similarly, in the last year, I have converted my 1100 EdgeHD to visual use and planetary photography. Fortunately, I was able to find suitable data from both those scopes, albeit not as much data as I would have liked. Still, I think it's enough to provide a fair comparison.
I chose NGC 6888 as the target because it is a good HOO target, which shortened the capture process a bit, and the target itself expressed an incredible amount of detail and contrast. Three of these images were captured under Bortle 1/2 skies at Deep Sky West remote observatory and three were captured here at home in Lewisville, Texas.
I processed each of these shots as similarly as possible with the exception that I 2X drizzled the stacks for the three small refractors. Otherwise, I applied exactly the same steps with identical parameters if at all possible. I'll be posting one result here on each of the next six days with a comparison poster on the seventh day. Overall, I spent a good bit of time over four months on this project and accumulated around 185 hours of integration time.
The images are as follows in the order of posting (from shortest focal length to longest):
1.
RedCat 71, 350mm, 35.0hrs, ZWO ASI6200MM, Chroma 3nm2. ZenithStar 61, 360mm, 23.23hrs, ZWO ASI6200MM, Antlia 3nm, Lewisville (this image)
3.
Takahashi FSQ106, 382mm, 33.28hrs, Moravian C3-61000 Pro, Chroma 3nm Fast, Deep Sky West4.
Takahashi TOA130, 990mm, 35.18hrs, Moravian C5a-100M, Chroma 3nm, Deep Sky West5.
Celestron 1100 EdgeHD (reduced), 1958mm, 24.63hrs, ZWO ASI6200MM, Chroma 3nm, Lewisville6.
Planewave CDK12.5, 2541mm, 33.53hrs, Moravian C5a-100M, Chroma 3nm, Deep Sky West7. Comparison poster
Please share your thoughts in the comments. I'll be fascinated to read what you have to say!
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