... announcing that my EM-10 guides very well at 1300mm. Well, maybe. This was a test shot to see whether I could image with this scope without having to buy a new mount. It looks like I might be able to. There are all kinds of problems with this image. I forgot to check collimation before setting up, I took no flats and they are obviously needed, and the colors are skewed toward the red. Also, last night the moon was 89% full, and the sky was full of water vapor (transparency was lousy). It was a good night to test out guiding. I wanted to know if I could shoot with the AT8RC on the EM-10. I'd say maybe. The star shapes in the image are, I believe, a result of miscollimation of something in the optical path; the shapes stayed the same no matter how long of an exposure I took, and they are uniform in each sub-exposure. The guiding was spot on. Actually, the mount put in the best guiding performance I have ever seen. At any rate, it looks like the scope, mount, and focal length might work for me, and that deserves a post. In fact, there was a light breeze; more wind than I've ever imaged in, and it didn't show up in the image at all. Guiding was done with a 60mm f/4 homebrew scope, a DSI Pro Mono, and PHD. The 1300mm focal length was reached by adding a WO 0.8x II ff/fr in front of the SXVF-H9C. The telescope's natural focal length is 1625mm.
The first image is shrunken down to de-emphasize the funny star shapes. The second image is a 100% crop of the galaxy cores.
Here's a full-sized, bluer version, processed a different way:
AltCombPSa.png)
And here's a version pre-processed in Nebulosity and stacked and otherwise processed in Maxim DL, with finishing touches in Photoshop CS3:
AltComb2MDL&PSa.png)
Here's a full-sized, bluer version, processed a different way:AltCombPSa.png)
And here's a version pre-processed in Nebulosity and stacked and otherwise processed in Maxim DL, with finishing touches in Photoshop CS3:AltComb2MDL&PSa.png)
AltComb2MDL&PSa.png){kind=link}
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