Shots With the 152/900 and the Quark 9th April

My good friend Mike Garbett came round today with a Lyra Optics 152/900 refractor he had bought - a real beast of a scope so could try a bit of modding with it to install a 75mm ERF internally on the focuser internally with a view to using it with the Quark, well the results were very promising, and I have to say, we were both surprised how little the scope 
 seemed not to be affected by the both poor seeing and also transparency.  What these images don't show that at best the sky was a milky white in colour with high to mid level clouds blowing around and interfering with the view.  The histogram on the laptop screen was moving around rapidly and contrast varying significantly, so it was the usual case of keep an eye on it and if it was appearing to have one of the better moments just hitting record and hoping the stacking software would work it's magic with the results as usual.  The view through the eyepiece, and we tried a few including a 32mm Meade plossl and also the very good Lunt zoom were jaw dropping, showing plenty of high contrast very 3D looking detail.  Certainly a better view than the few Lunt 152s I have looked through, and especially as this scope is apparently the same (GSO) model that Lunt use for there 152 scope and the combination of this, the Quark and the D-ERF used were about 20% of the price of the Lunt that you would pay in the UK.  Yes, you can get a full disk view with the big Lunt, but that's not really what this scope is designed for.  I will certainly be interested to see how Mike gets on with this scope and have to admit after using it briefly yesterday that it is one that I have added to my wish list!