First light... fail

[glowingturnip]

Just thought I'd share this pic of a random star field I took trying out my brand new AZEQ6GT mount...

Ok, well, small confession.  I picked up the new mount at the start of a long weekend in Spain, had a lovely sunny day while setting it up, and then of course had the obligatory high thin cloud come over by the first evening which hung around for the rest of the weekend, thwarting any attempts at astrophotography.  However, on the last night, after we finished dinner, we went outside and noticed the sky was clear, so I decided to set up and have a go.  Unfortunately, it was very late to start setting up, and err...  we'd had the best part of two bottles of wine already, so my techniques were somewhat sub-optimal to say the least !   My polar alignment was terrible (I  think I forgot what I was doing halfway through, and then thought 'meh, that will do'), I was off target, and my flats at the end of the evening where actually darker than my lights !

As a  test though, I'm pretty pleased with things - a very quick PHD calibration, a very tight graph in PHD, rms errors of about 0.4" in RA and 0.8" in Dec (P.A) and it stayed locked on target all night.  The stars I think are nice and small (seems I managed to focus, at least), though they are a little eggier than I'd like (P.A).  Most pleasing for me is that I seem to have overcome my coma and collimation issues - that's a full DSLR frame (apart from cropping off the stacking artifacts), and I think I can only see very small coma left  in the very top and bottom right corners.  Pleased with that.

There are two galaxies in this picture - in the bottom right corner is NGC 5198, a 13th mag elliptical galaxy 2.1 arcminutes across, and on the bottom edge, about a quarter of the way from the left, is UGC 8597, a 14th mag face-on spiral galaxy.   However, if you're wondering what this was supposed to be a picture of, the rather better-known M51 Whilrpool Galaxy is *just* out of shot to the right hand side !

Don't drink and dither !

[Steve Ward]

Good start ... 

Always pays to do a longish test exposure with the ISO cranked right up first to check that what you're aiming at is where it's supposed to be ... 

[damnut]

Hi Stuart,

That's a great read and a nice image.!! At least you know where M51 is for next time, look forward to seeing your work.

[laser_jock99]

Well at least you two galaxies. My 'random starfields' usually have nothing.

[Marky1973]

Looks great Stuart!