Acuter Maksy 60 Sun Observatory

Acuter Maksy 60 Sun Observatory
Solar preliminaries began with the new Acuter Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope on Thursday May 12th 2022 when the daytime sky momentarily cleared forming cloud opening sucker holes for astro imaging and study. The Acuter telescope has already received the solar filter and sun finderscope.

Left: setting the exposure with the correct application of filters is an important step to setting up the Solar Observatory with the minuscule Maksutov 60mm telescope. 

Experiments began with image scale, formatting and processing. The first setup is from the indoor observatory viewing through window glass and imaging with processing to remove window glass. The stock 20mm shows the entire solar disk, albeit on the small side at 37.5x while other oculars and a barlow zoom in on the edge for prominences and solar flares. The Acuter 60mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope is very high resolution and a perfect candidate for serving as one of the primary solar telescopes at the solar observatory.

Acuter Mak 60mm Star Test

Acuter Mak 60mm Star Test

Star Test - when sweeping the sky to locate the planets, many stars passed through the FOV. This was surprising as usually the fog, mist, upper atmospheric haze, light and air pollution severely limit any number of stars seen. It was decided to do the star test, to look at the optical figure of the new Acuter 60mm Maksutov (Maksy) telescope. I was not expecting too much but the test was a real surprise, looking like the perfect depiction from a book showing symmetrical perfect concentric rings. How is that possible?

The telescope is definitely a keeper! If a telescope's collimation is perfect and the atmosphere is transparent and still enough, the focused image of a star will be very much like a circular dot of light. The star test was picture perfect! It's a good thing too - there are no adjustment calibration points visible on the telescope. The existing calibration at this level of precision will enable the Acuter Mak 60 telescope to have the potential to become an instrument of high resolution. On days and nights of steady seeing conditions, it will be interesting to run such tests of resolution on images of the Sun and Moon. In the future, the connection of a CMOS camera will show images of the optical alignment.

Basic Star Testing

Acuter Maksy 60 First Light

Acuter Maksy 60 Telescope

New First Light Celebration!
It didn't take long to set up the new Acuter 60mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope and commemorate First Light - about 5 minutes time in all. Wednesday, May 11, 2022, on the day of arrival, marks new First Light for the minuscule-in-size but massive-in-power telescope.

The flowers seen above, purchased online in Beijing China, commemorate the special event.

Left: setting together, the larger Celestron Nexstar 6SE at left and the cute Acuter 2.4-inch Maksutov. The powerful and ultimately cute Acuter 60mm Maksy is the "cat's pajamas and pulchritudinous."

The telescope was used with the supplied 20mm eyepiece and gave a spectacular high resolution view. Using the stock tripod and components, the scope was set on the new Observatory Platform indoors and looking through window glass, focused on a very distant building located by the mountains. The 60mm (2.4-inch diameter) aperture view resolution was incredible, showing no aberrations, excellent color, and detail on individual building bricks. For a comparison, the Celestron Nexstar 6SE, known also to be a high resolution telescope was set up with a high quality 25mm eyepiece and pointed on the same building. The views were practically identical with the 6SE showing an image that was ever-so-slightly brighter but not higher in resolution.

LOG Sunday May 8 2022

LOG Sunday May 8 2022

Nexstar Observatory
We have now collected a total of 29 recycled distilled water bottles to be used for making the back side extension of the indoor/outdoor platform extension. The distilled water bottle is ten times the strength of a regular water bottle. Further design indicates ten per row are needed with 4 rows for a total of 40 bottles required to complete the project. The cache increases at one per day and we will have enough by the end of eleven days. "You will be in the green world."

Orion CT80

House of telescopes! After a period of about 2 years, the Orion CT80 was stored in the shipping box, and was a situation of basically not knowing how to mount it. Today, I've become so familiar with mountings, it was a piece of cake establishing how to mount the OTA onto a tripod and also how to attach a finderscope. The CT80 comes without the finderscope, without the mount, and with no accessories like EPs or focal extensions so added eyepieces will come into focus.

Left: the Orion CT80 came with only the OTA tube. This weekend, a finderscope, finderscope ring mount, dovetail shoe, and HF-3110 tripod were added for standalone functionality. A future order will include a 90-degree diagonal with 99% transmission.

Tripod HF-3110

Free tripod! There's an interesting story around this tripod. About six years ago I had the need to mount my camera on a tripod and visited the night market to find one. I chose the best and largest available at that time. A local friend bartered with the merchants to get the price down so it was a very good deal. The tripod has four long extensions so it can raise a camera or telescope a good distance off the ground, and the best features are low cost, small size and ultra lightweight. It has its own bag and is ideal for portability. So this tripod is excellent for initial use with the small Orion CT80 OTA and the upcoming Acuter Maksutov.

Acuter Maksutov Telescope

The minuscule mak! Monday is the big day! Coming soon is a new Acuter Maksutov 60mm small light blue telescope (Maksy), tentatively to be ordered on Monday, May 8, 2022.

Left: the minuscule maksutov will be ordered without the matching blue finderscope. It will however, contain the very high quality sun filter,  sun finder, and AMICI prism in the 90-degree diagonal for upright and correct orientation views.

While the Orion CT80 OTA white metal tube is 14.7-inches long and 3.25 lbs, the Acuter Maksy is only a third of that weight and its plastic tube is only 8-inches long. It should work better with the HF-3110 tripod due to lighter weight and it also will mount alongside the Celestron main observatory telescope OTA, putting less stress on the mount and motors in the Nexstar 6SE. The popularity of the small high resolution Maksy with exceptional optics is spreading like wildfire and is now sold out at most places. One key feature is the accessory roster, which lists a solar filter claimed to be comprised of high quality Baader film and mounted with its own solar finder. With the right techniques and accessories (CMOS astro imaging camera, processing computers), computer processing software power, additional h-alpha and spectroscopic filters, solar results could be spectacular for the minuscule Mak. Plus, when attached to the main observatory telescope, the telescopes will share guiding, tracking and all the advanced resources provided by the Celestron Nexstar GOTO mount.

New Observatory Naming

It does seem that Nexstar Observatory has caught on for a new name. The previous name of NTO Nexstar Telescope Observatory is retained but not being used in its entirety at this time. The nice thing about NO or NTO is it can be reconfigured for many additional applications, indoor, outdoor, through glass, no glass (lunar, planetary, deep sky, solar, nature & conservation).

Green Gem Laser Finder

The green gem laser finder on the Nexstar was removed and decommissioned for safety and legal issues.

INDEX

* Nexstar Observatory

* Orion CT80

* Tripod HF-3110

* Acuter Maksutov

* New Observatory Naming

* Green Gem Laserfinder