I had some great opportunities over the summer to work with the lead astronomer of the Battle Point Astronomical Association in order to help better align the Ritchie telescope (it turns out that working on very large and custom mounts is a lot more challenging than backyard commodity setups). After some prying and hammering and replacing some worn out parts, we were able to get the RA axis almost perfectly aligned, though we still have some noticeable drift in the DEC axis. Even so, we were able to take a quick stacked exposure (around 4 minutes total time) of M51 on a newly acquired Mallincam.
M51, Ritche Telescope
M51 captured with only 4 minutes total worth of exposures using the Ritche telescope and it’s 27.5" primary objective. Live stacked in Mallincam and post-processed in PixInsight.
Having gotten this captured, I spent the next night re-shooting M51 using my backyard setup, as I had not yet imaged M51 using my QHY camera, and was able to bring out some amazing coloration.
M51, My Backyard
M51 revisited from my backyard. Explore Scientific ED102 scope and QHY268C astrocam. 220 minutes of exposure (110x120s subs), stacked and processed in PixInsight