M 3

As the saying goes, it's better to have 100 friends than 100 rubles! I recently got an Orion UK 300/1200 telescope on temporary custody—well, more like for finishing touches. The tube belongs to Sergey, who enjoys photographing the Lagoon Nebula... It's an interesting little tube, made in England in the early 2000s. The tube is aluminum, lightweight, but a bit flimsy. Sergey had been working on it for the last couple of years, but then I took it over—he got tired of waiting for results from it. I reinforced the front with two plywood rings, redesigned the primary mirror mount, and installed a baffle in front of it. I shot at dusk with 60-second exposures. Didn't spend much time editing—just a quick process. And here's the result. The frame is almost full, only cropped for tracking errors.