A William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD Apochromatic refractor was mounted on a Celestron AVXGOTO mount and a ZWO ASI178MC 14-bit camera was placed at the focus.
The refractor was one that I rebuilt after it was left partly disassembled by a late colleague. Having been rebuilt and cleaned, the scope seemed to be good optically. Holes that had been drilled in the tube were covered with black insulating tape and a Red-dot finder was attached using black Surgu.
Rebuilt William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD Apochromatic refractor
The scope was aimed at the Orion nebula and AstroDMx Capture for macOS was used to capture data from the ZWO ASI178MC.
The imaging setup
An occultation board can be seen on a photographic tripod, shielding the scope from a nearby street light.
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for macOS capturing data on the Orion nebula
A total of 150 x 15s exposures were captured with matching dark-frames, and although there were some passing clouds Deep Sky Stacker was used to register and stack the best 135 frames, giving a total exposure time of 33.75 min. More frames would have been captured but thickening clouds prevented further captures.
The final Autosaved 32-bit floating point image was post processed in the Gimp 2.10, Affinity Photo, Topaz sharpen and Neat image..
Final image of M42/M43
Closer view
The scope performed well, giving good colour performance, and AstroDMx Capture for macOS displayed the image nicely using the non-destructive 32-bit visualisation controls.
AstroDMx Capture for Windows, macOS or Linux (Including Raspberry Pi) can be downloaded freely here:
