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Comfort is a very important point, more especially as you get older, also convenience is a big factor. If your scope is easy to set up, comfortable in use, your eyepieces are not challenging to get a good view then you’re much more likely to take advantage of any clear skies.  

Next, S3 PanSTARRS, which was in Cygnus, near Deneb, and with a backdrop of a great number of Milky Way stars and emission nebulae. Consequently I may re-visit the data, and see whether I can get the long comet tail and nebulae to show better. In the meantime, this is the result, using the same equipment and processing as the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS image, except that 26 sub-exposures were obtained.

Hi everyone—I’m late to the party on this thread, but I see that it is still active.  Great work by all, and I’ve enjoyed learning what you have been trying. I’ve been hard at work on trying to make the plan from the OP work for my Apertura 10” Dob.  Sadly, my base is slightly too large for the original plans posted here and my groundboard feet sit about 2cm centimeters outside the template on the north axis.  I’ve been scouring also through the www.reinervogel.net website referenced in the beginning, to try and work out how to make this project fit for my Dob, and trying to figure in Centre of Gravity (COG) calculations and his original measurements to see how to “stretch” this template to fit and be accurate and stable. When designing according to Vogel’s original instructions, I am getting my South axis calculated to be underneath my Dob groundboard.  Knowing my groundboard is larger, and guessing my COG is lower than the OP template—perhaps this makes sense.  But I have not seen anyone else here with this issue and am not certain how this would affect balance and tracking. I have thought of 3 options overall: 1)Extend the North axis base by several centimeters on both ends and build the rest of the template according to the OP plans.  Again—no idea how this would affect balance and tracking   2)Use my calculations from Vogel’s original plans that puts my South axis underneath my Dob and hope that works.  Also—no idea if this is safe or effective.   3)Reach out to the community here and get help.   I believe this will be my best bet.  I am hopeful that someone will be able to provide further direction before I put saw to wood.  Below I am including some of the parameters and measurements that I have been gathering, and I hope that will be enough to give someone who is experienced what they need to point me in the right direction.   Measurements: Outer distance from one groundboard foot to a second groundboard foot:  465mm Optical Tube Centre of Gravity to ground:  600mm (assumes this is from centre of the altitude axis pivots) Rocker Box Centre of Gravity to ground: 150mm Optical Tube weight:  18.63kg Rocker Box weight:  13.63kg Distance from azimuth bearing to outer side of groundboard foot:  267mm Calculated COG of assembled telescope:  388mm to ground Height of ground feet: 22mm My latitude is 53.5 degrees, in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada Many thanks to anyone who can provide me with direction and support!   Thanks, Graeme LaRue  

My first session imaging with a ‘scope for many weeks due to the weather, tackling 2 of my favourite subject - comets. Both were straightforward to find with the 12” Newt, after checking their positions via Heavens-above.com. I imaged Tsuchinshan-ATLAS first, as its location would soon become inaccessible due to local obstructions. Below is the result of 19 x 2-min auto-guided exposures at ISO 3200, with an astro-modded EOS 600D and 12” f/4 Newtonian on a Losmandy G11 mount. The frames were stacked in Deepskystacker and processed in Canon Digital Professional (curves) and CyberLink PhotoDirector (noise reduction and a slight crop). Regards, Mike

Thanks @wimvb and @PhotoGav . I had found formulae but was not confident in their use. All noted for future reference. 🙏