mrpizza

I spent 2 minutes bracketing exposures using the Canon app on my phone which made it very easy and fast.  I went up to 2 seconds but that blew everything out.  I spent the last 2 minutes looking at the sky, Jupiter and Venus were very bright but Saturn was in the tree line.  I set up in a parking area for a Trail Head with about 10 other cars.  I was the only one with equipment for photography.  I got to meet some interesting people who also traveled some distance.  Funny thing was there were no locals there.

I traveled 900 miles with no guarantee of clear skies but was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.  I set up using a Losmandy G11 with an Orion EON80 and Canon 7Ti at prime focus.  All shot at ISO100 and exposed   1/800  1/250  1/30 respectively.

Chris

Here is a comparison against the James Webb Telescope.  My image was processed slightly different than the final image posted on Astrobin.  

Chris

I was able to get a couple of clear nights late summer here in Florida where the humidity makes it tough.  I always wanted to capture this with a big scope so this year I was able to use the 14" Meade.

Meade 14" LX850 

Mesu200 MKII

Qhy 268M

https://www.astrobin.com/sannbr/

Chris

I have a Meade 14" LX850 ota on top and my Mesu 200 MKII  doesn't seem to notice the load. 

Chris

Hi Tony,

You can post your question  at  https://groups.io/g/Sitechservo and someone will try and help. If not they can direct you who to contact for repair.  I had a problem with the same unit you have and sent it in for repair.  They are very responsive.  Sending your unit for repair would cost MUCH less that purchasing a new one.  Good luck.

Chris

This is about as low in the sky I'm willing to invest imaging time on the scope.  I'm trying BlurXTerminator for the first time on this image.  I was able to notice such a difference that I will be purchasing the license.

Meade 14" LX850 ota

Mesu 200 MKII

Qhy268m

Details at https://www.astrobin.com/17ek1p/

Chris

Thanks Michael,

I spent a lot of time this past year studying the processing side of things to the point I feel the need for a diploma (for the time spent more so than the result)

Chris

M16 is at the edge of my horizon limit here in Florida (I have a roof top cutting me off).  This is the first time I have gathered SII data and added it to my LRGBHa data.  I didn't see much difference with the data but kept it in the final version.  There are plenty of Hubble palette images of this object so I went old school. 

Meade 14" ACF

Mesu 200 MKII

Qhy 268M

Baader L,R,G,B,Ha,SII filters

ONAG with ASI 174mini

https://www.astrobin.com/30i1cw/

Thanks for looking

Chris

ELP- Thanks I will investigate

DrMike and Dan -  Thank  you for the kind words

Elp - Is that something you do in Pixinsight or PS?

A few clear nights in May and 12.5 hours of data.  I struggled with gradients in my last image (M100).  I have that problem solved but I have stars that have color that is not aligning resulting in red and green bloated stars.  Details here https://www.astrobin.com/ezw9bq/

Qhy 268M 

Mesu 200 MKII

ONAG 

Baader RGB 36mm

Chris

Jim- I subscribed to Adams fundamentals last Nov.  LOTS of material.  I have watched his DBE videos.  I need to check my patience and go over it again.  I know it would help.

Chris

tomato - I'm 3 miles from the Atlantic at 17 feet above sea level.  Seeing is a hit or miss with all that atmosphere above me.  I use Voyager and can tell by the focus numbers how the seeing is.  I would guess that 40% of clear nights I shut down because focus numbers don't look good and I know from experience I would end up throwing subs out.

Chris

Xsubmariner -  I have the LX850 version that is F/8.  I use a Moonlite crayford focuser.  I also have the ONAG in the train that adds roughly 90 mm back focus.

Olly -  DBE and I are not on good terms.  I like your version much better!

Chris

I gathered the data back in March and finally got around to processing it.  For some reason I had some gradients in the  red and blue channels that I was not ale to totally remove.  I was able to eliminate the red halos around the bright stars by selecting red subs that  had a smaller FWHM than the other channels.  This meant  I had to take some extra red subs ( about 25% more in this case). https://www.astrobin.com/771f3a/

Meade 14" ACF

Mesu 200 MKII

QHY 268m

ONAG

Chris

I believe the encoders on the  e200 have greater resolution thus eliminating the need for "another set" of encoders.  I have a Meade 14" with plenty of camera train load and no slippage whatsoever although I did spend some time balancing.  Whenever I end a session I park the scope near horizon and the next session  (It could be a couple of weeks due to moon or weather) I can center any object I tell the mount to goto after unparking.  A caveat here is that I have a permanent pier and have got the PA nailed down.

Greetings from Florida.  The skies have been clear so I powered up the observatory to grab some data.  I have been noticing a red fringe on my stars and upon closer inspection the PSF of the color channels are not uniform.  I have read that color channels need not be critically sharp since L channel does that.  I would tend to disagree.  Normally I don't inspect too closely the color channel subs but I guess I will have to in the future.  I know for L channel I reject any sub that has FWHM greater than 2.4.   Details here https://www.astrobin.com/67vnun/

Meade 14" ACF

Mesu MKII 200

Qhy 268M

ONAG

Chris

I had some good seeing over Christmas and captured the data for this.  The Mesu 200 MKII does a great job of keeping the stars tight at 3995mm focal length. 

Meade 14" LX850

Mesu 200 MKII

QHY 268M

ONAG

Thanks for looking

 https://www.astrobin.com/9epvdr/

Chris

Thank you for the kind words.  I originally joined this forum to learn more about the Mesu mount since there is not a lot users  here in the US.   There are plenty of excellent imagers on this forum from which I have gathered inspiration from.  I spent the past 25 years imaging with a Meade 10" LX50 on a Losmandy G11 non goto using a variety of cameras starting with a Olympus OM-1.  I sat by and watched technology grow in this hobby  (leaving me feel like Fred Flinstone of imaging),  so this year after having the Mesu in my sights for many years, I was able to fulfill one of my goals.  I figured if I was going big with the mount why stop there and was fortunate enough to find a slightly used Meade 14" LX850 ota and upgraded the camera to a QHY 268m and added an ONAG.  To top tings off I scrapped SGP for Voyager (nothing wrong with SGP) so I have given myself quite the learning curve.  With the help of many members on this forum (as evidence in the image) I have managed get the mount up and running to put together some good data.   

Chris

Greetings from Florida.  I wanted to share this image as I have been dialing in my new mount the Mesu 200MKII.  I'm imaging at 2995mm and average guiding is 0.29 rms using PHD2.  My next step in fine tuning is to tackle what I perceive as camera tilt as some of the stars have a "red bloat" to them. 

Meade 14" LX850ACF

Mesu 200 MKII

QHY268M

ONAGT

https://www.astrobin.com/5rlse0/

Chris

I have been using my Mesu 200 MKII for several months now.  I use an ONAG for guiding on a Meade 14" LX850 at 2995mm focal length. I have been able to dial in PHD2 to consistently 0.27".  Do those of you getting better results ( I realize better in this case is being picky) utilize the Sci-Tech modeling feature?  I don't and when experimenting early on I did not see the benefit. 

Chris

It's been a couple of weeks and between Sci-Tech and Voyager it's been a learning experience.  I recorded a video of me mounting the Meade LX650 14" on the mount.  I did this for a size comparison of the mount.  

https://youtu.be/kdr1s1uDn1M

So far I never get tired of the flat guide graph!

Just to follow up on my major mishap.  I received both R.A. and Dec. components back from Lucas.  He had to replace the roller pins and recalibrate everything after the fall.  Also the wedge arrived this time.  I am glad to report that the mount is securely in place in its new home.  

Chris