Things are starting to go better with my meridian flips and reflection problems. I was able to get over three hours of great data on M3. My guiding was superb, and I started using a moderate dither every few frames. This is 230 frames of 50 seconds each at 800… Continue Reading... "M3, the original cluster"
I was looking for a way for the scope to park itself after my imaging plan was complete in APT. It turns out this is pretty easy. In the plan editor, you can simply add a line at the end that has one exposure of zero length. Near the bottom,… Continue Reading... "Parking when done in APT"
I’ve had trouble with the meridian flip goto failing my last few nights out. I’d wake up in the morning to the mount being in the position it would be in pre-flip, and, only this last time, did I go out and observe it acting up. The declination axis would… Continue Reading... "Meridian flip woes with APT and EQMOD"
I was previously using a Nikon T-ring adapter from one of the cheap Amazon sellers, such as Astromania or Svbony. I’d recently noticed some aberrations in one corner of my images while using the Baader coma corrector. After playing around a bit, I found that the cheap T-ring adapter didn’t… Continue Reading... "Nikon T-Ring Adapters"
I’ve been fighting a big problem recently with concentric rings of different colors appearing in both my lights and flats. However, the flats do not correct the rings in the lights, and possibly make them worse. Below is a severely stretched stack of over 60 images of M101 that were… Continue Reading... "Concentric coloured rings in images"
Late at night, the M101 group was starting to circle around Polaris to a decent altitude. The APT autofocus seemed to work better this time, with a FWHM of around 5 for the stars. I began taking three minute exposures, and only got 67 frames deep before the meridian flip… Continue Reading... "M101 redux"
Since I left the scope out overnight for a long imaging run, I decided to try the sun this morning. I took 70 images at a fast shutter speed of 1/10 of a second. I used some Thousand Oaks solar film taped behind the peep hole in the dust cover… Continue Reading... "First try at the Sun"
After figuring everything out with my new equipment, I set up for a real target, Bode’s galaxy and the Cigar galaxy. Just east of Polaris that day, I figured I could get a ton of images of it. I set up the scope to take five hours of exposures at… Continue Reading... "Bode’s and the Cigar galaxies"
My first target with the new scope and mount was a cluster of galaxies near the star 1 Ari. I mostly was just testing equipment and making sure all the software worked. I was only able to get 90 minutes of exposure on it, still giving a poor signal to… Continue Reading... "Cluster of galaxies near 1 Ari"
Well, I decided to upgrade my equipment. As I have some weird fascination with Newtonians, I got the mountable Quattro 300P. The focal length is a little more useful on it at 1200mm. It also has a better focuser on it than my Dobsonian did. I paired the focuser with… Continue Reading... "New SkyWatcher EQ8-R and Quattro 300P"
