First light with X2-C and LL

[Ain Soph Aur]

Hi folks. I am a new Lodestar X2-Mono and X2-Color owner and these are some of my newbie first light Lodestar Live images from last evening with the X2-C and a C80ED f/7.5 refractor. Skies were hazy and the moon was up in the East. I still have lots to learn!

M19:

Little Ghost Nebula NGC 6369:

Trifid nebula M20:

Lagoon nebula M8

[xtreemchaos]

great images mate,you have done well,nice first light.thanks for sharing..charl..

[HiloDon]

Great results, Brandon! You caught on quickly.

Don

[Ain Soph Aur]

Thanks Don. I am still learning but the curve is a little less steep with all the awesome folks here sharing their knowledge! And Paul makes its easy

All of these images were taken with a very unaligned CGEM (I had to use the Orion Mini 50/162 with ASI120MM as an electronic finder) while I was sitting in the house RDC'd into my laptop out at the mount and controlling with Sky Tools. Amazing results all considering the skies, moon and mount.

My apologies for the dual post, I have not found any way to edit posts?

[Dom543]

Great first light Bandon!

Just as a trick, if you adjust the Hue slider slightly to the right, the blue part of the Trifid nebula would jump out better. The red may become more of a magenta-red. But that's actually perfect. The red looking part of the Trifid is, in reality H-alpha emission overpowering a base blue reflection nebula. Use of a blue filter shows that the blue reflection part extends also to where the nebula appears red. Hue is the last slider that is marked with a circle with the three colors.

I don't want to hijack your thread but since you own a filter wheel, here is some motivation to use it at one point. Below are the images of the Trifid taken with blue and H-alpha filters. (You may have to click on the image to see it in full size.)

The composite image resulting from them was posted here http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/144516-astro-video-image-gallery/?p=6601977

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[Ain Soph Aur]

Hi Dom. Thank you for the excellent advice! While I do have a ZWO manual filter wheel (and ZWO LRGB filters, and waiting on a Orion Nautilus 7 filter automated wheel and Orion narrow-band filters), while in learning mode I am sticking with camera only. I have the Orion 7nm filter set on the way, and very much looking forward to Paul's new LL release and doing HST palette on the fly I doubt Orion has a RGB filter set that is par-focal to their "extra-narrowband" set, so I may be liquidating EP's to fund new filters soon. One thing I sure need is a filter to do darks on the Nautilus wheel so I don't have to go outside.

After getting a taste of EAA, not sure visual is holding to much interest for me other than double stars.

[jam1e1]

Hi great start! Out of interest how did you link once in house? The usb cable isn't too long, did you buy a 10m one?

[Ain Soph Aur]

Hi great start! Out of interest how did you link once in house? The usb cable isn't too long, did you buy a 10m one?

Laptop out at the scope and connecting to it wirelessly via RDC. Working on running CAT cable out to by-pass the wireless network.