Some captures with new equipment

[RobertI]

Had a chance to test my new scope and mount last night. Not the best conditions but I really enjoyed the ease of the goto (my first) which after 2 star alignment and 1 star calibration was spot on and put the object on the sensor every time.

Equipment used was Altair Astro RC6 with Celestron F6.3 reducer (seemed to work ok) and CG-5 GT (yes another CG5 but it was cheap!). The RC6 behaved well - nice and easy to focus and held focus all session. More difficult to extract detail than C8 but easier to use and I'm hoping it will be excellent for long exposure imaging.

Anyhoo, here are the captures.

Mirach's Ghost, a dwarf lenticular galaxy lying 7 arc minutes from Mirach:

Close up of M31 spiral arms plus space junk:

NGC891 in Andromeda - a bit faint and starting to get some glare from a streetlight as lower on horizon:

NGC6338 - an area in Draco with a large number of fainter galaxies - I think I was actually shooting through cloud at this point:

[Paul81]

Nice stuff there Rob! The RC6 is a great little scope for the money, I have been really please with mine as well. Interesting to note in your post that the Celestron reducer also works (and it certainly looks to from the images). The scopes versatility (for video anyway) is great with a variety of reducers available to give a selection of focal lengths.

[RobertI]

Cheers Paul. It is a great little scope and I've seen people taking some great long exposure images with it (it is an 'astrograph after all'!). I have found the star spikes really help focussing, either side of focus each spike is split into 2 spikes ( a bit like a Bhatinov mask) but at focus there is a single thin spike. Seems to work well so far. Have you found the same?

[Paul81]

I will have to look more closely at the diffraction spikes next time out with the RC6. I have found focus is tricky with the 0.5x reducer in place - no real fault of the scope more just the physics of the reducer. The spikes could be quite a help. I keep meaning to make a Bhatinov mask for this scope to help with the reducer.