m97 and m108 new scope,camera and field flattener seems to work

[assouptro]

Sorry for the long title but it has been a long journey to get back to any sort of quality imaging
I treated myself to a second hand revelation astro 100ed and self modded a canon eos 450d as I was getting fed up of the amp glow from my former 350d,
The rev was a disappointment as there seemed to be a lot of curvature in the field so I purchased a second hand tsflat2 from Daz on this forum, then I had to make it work which involved a couple of phone calls and emails to Bern at Modern astronomy.
 
finally I was ready to image!
 
No I wasn't! I was having serious tracking issues my lx200gps just didn't seem to want to track faithfully, it was constantly drifting south. I realized I probably had a balancing issue so I stripped all the weights off of my scope and started from scratch, balancing using a method I found on the web which seemed to allow me to point my scope anywhere with the clutch off and it stayed there!
 
Finally I was ready to image!
 
No I wasn't, I was still having guiding issues so I decided to train my PEC I ended up using Meade's own envisage software to guide on a star whilst training the PEC 3 times. I stood next to it with the controller in my hand to make any adjustments the guiding couldn't cope with.
 
It worked! my scope was guiding pretty well now, all I needed was clear skies. well post eclipse I was blessed to a few nights of pretty good weather and no moon too so I decided to pick a target I have never imaged before and stuck with it for 3-4 nights
 
this is the result  11hours46min iso 800 stacked in dss tweaked in photoshop3 (although it looks better uncompressed)

I am happy to sat the TSFlat2 seems to work

Thanks for looking

clear skies

Bryan

[alcol620]

hi Bryan

what was the method you used for balancing? when I balance my 8SE celestron, there it never seems to be very sensitive. Almost seems that balance can be achieved over a wide range. Presumably the gears are very tight?

Regards

Alec

[assouptro]

Hi Alec

I balanced the dec first by pointing the scope south (fully loaded) locked the ra then pointing it skyward unscrewing the weight away from the ota until the scope was in a neutral position pointing straight up that's the vertical axis sorted

Then I spun the ra round pointing the scope north and moved the weight along the ota from front to back until it balanced horizontally

When that was achieved the ota stayed anywhere I placed it in dec regardless of the ra

I did weight the east fork slightly so the ra was under some pressure and always pushing as this is supposed to be beneficial.

I was going to provide a link to the method with pics but I cannot find it!

Cheers

Bryan

[alcol620]

Thanks Bryan, will give it a try. 

Nice image.

Regards

Alec

[peter shah]

Nice job...lovely image

[assouptro]

Thanks for the encouragement Alec and I would recommend persevering with balance as it seems to be pretty important

Thanks also to peter for acknowledging my hard work, it hasn't got the immediate wow factor of some of the pics on here but it represents a return to form and progress nonetheless