Recently I purchased new travel telescope, the mount and the camera and I decided to make small comparison with my primary equipment. New equipment consist of iOptron CEM25P mount, which is very portable equatorial mount and small (6”) Ritchey–Chrétien telescope. Even the camera is new. ZWO 1600 MC has only 400 grams compared to the old Mii G2, which has 2.5 kg. The reason is that ZWO is color version without filter wheel, therefore narrow band imaging is not possible, but I will use this camera mainly under the darks skies. Detailed review of the portable setup will follow.

Back to the picture, I pointed the telescopes into the constellation Scutum and captured open cluster M26. This cluster is approximately 180 million years old and the light travelled 5400 years from there into my telescopes. The cluster is located in the plane of our home galaxy Milky Way; therefore there are so many stars in the background.

The upper picture was made by my primary setup – Gemini G35f, astrograph Newtonian 254/1000 with GPU coma corrector and MII G2 8300 camera. The lower picture is the outcome of the new setup: iOptron CEM25P, 154/1370 mm RC telescope with focal reducer Astro Physics CCDT67 and ZWO 1600 MC camera.

Technical details

M48 is an open cluster discovered by Charles Messier in 1771. The cluster is located in constellation Hydra and it’s 1500 light-years far from the Earth. This cluster can be observed even by small binocular, but small telescope reveals more than 50 stars. During waiting for Sombrero galaxy I pointed my telescope just below bright star Procyon and collected some light coming from this cluster.