NGC 2244 - The Rosette Nebula (6" Refractor Shoot-out)

Equipment: 6" Skywatcher Esprit and 6" Takahashi TOA-150 on a Software Bisque Paramount ME, matching Canon 60Da DSLRs

Exposure: 36 x 5 minutes (3 hours) through each scope, 6 hours total

Location: Comanche Springs Astronomy Campus (CSAC), Three Rivers Foundation, Crowell, TX.

I was recently approached by Celestron and Skywatcher telescopes, by virtue of my long-going association with the Three Rivers Foundation, to shoot a series of images that would provide content for an upcoming advertising campaign. The idea is that you take the new Skywatcher Esprit 6“ apochromatic refractor and perform a head-to-head, simultaneous data acquisition against a leading competitor refractor (typically twice the price), and see what results arise. In this case, my current Takahashi TOA-150 is the perfect competitor.

The resulting image is a composite of both data sets, comprising one long, 6 hour image. The telescopes both performed equally well.