CCD-Freak

They should calibrate out with some Darks and Dithering.

They typically have lots of chromatic aberration so the focus is quite soft. I use a UV-IR filter to help improve the image. PHD will normally guide well even though the stars look bad.

Great image......It looks like a small barking dog to me as well as a shark (^8

I recently went to the Okie-Tex star party and we ended up having some great weather. I just started working on the 16.8 GB of image data I captured. I will be doing more careful processing but I wanted to see what kind of image data I have to work with. This is a quick process of 150 x 120 second (5 hours total integration) of NGC7023 the Iris taken with an ASI-533MC-Pro through a 150mm F2.8 Hyper Newt on an AP900GTO mount. The only filter was a Baader UV-IR. Captured and processed with Astro Art 8. I like imaging "Dirt" (^8

The handpad has the drive push buttons for guiding and panning.

The UO 80mm scope is actualy very light weight. The overall weight of the whole 10"RC with Moonlite focuser, cameras and guide scope is somewhere north of 50 pounds. The AP900 manages it very well.

I used an old University Optic "Kit Scope" which is 80mm F6.25 with 500mm FL with my RC-8 and now with my AT10RC and it woks very well. It gives me a wider field with lots of stars to choose from. I don't use rings for mounting to limit possible differential flexure. These scopes are rare now but if one could find or make something similar they would be happy. The attached NGC4565 was guided with the UO 80mm and an ASI-290MM using Astro-Art and PHD guiding.

Judging by the 8x50 polar finder and what I can see of the drive base it looks to be a 2080 LX3. I had one of those back in the 80s and it was a great scope. Do you have the hand paddle?

AA 6 and 7 added much improvement in the auto-guiding module. AA7 introduced full frame auto-guiding which works quite well. I am going to the Okie-Tex Star Party ( http://www.okie-tex.com/ ) next week and I will be checking out AA8 under the stars. I will be interested to see if any changes to auto-guiding have been implemented.

AA8 was released on the 15th so it is "hot of the press" (^8 Looks like a bunch of new capabilities have been added and revised. AA just keeps getting better. I sing it praises on this side of the pond but I often get ignored.

AA7 and now AA8 work fine with two ASCOM cameras and will also talk to PHD for dithering. AA has improved it's guiding too. I think AA6 might do it but I am not sure as at that time I was using native drivers and different brand cameras.

Probably will melt since it is forecast to be 98 F here tomorrow. A "cold front" 80 F is reported to be "on the way" (^8

Long ago I heard a seasoned machinist state that using just a bit of paraffin wax rubbed onto the threads will keep things from seizing. Not being an oily liquid i would think it would not migrate. I have been meaning to give it a go but have not as yet. Has anyone tried using it?

I have been considering one of those lenses to use with my ASI-533MCP. After seeing this image I think I will go after one. Great work !!!

I got Astro Art 2 when I bought an old MX5 camera and it worked great. I later upgraded to Astro Art 4 and used it with a HX916 then a SXV-M25C I just upgraded to Asto Art 8 yesterday and I am still using it to control the scope and all the camera equipment. I use it to do all my image processing too. http://www.msb-astroart.com/ Just keeps getting better and more capable. NGC5033 captured and processed with AA7

The 16iC has basic TEC cooling....plug in the 12v cable and it cools to about 25 degrees C below ambient air temperature with no control via software. I think the 314L+ has a similar arrangement. PHD has no control over the cooling of the 16iC. If your guide camera has "set point cooling" there may be adjustments or at least and on / off setting in the ASCOM driver.

The 16iC cooler worked just fine so the sensor was much quieter than the Orion guider I was using up to then. The sensor was also larger giving more choices of guide stars and the 16bit ADC did not saturate on all but a very few bright stars. I used it up until just recently when I got a more modern guide camera. I still have it in my kit.

I guided with an old Atik 16iC and PHD and it worked great. The cooled camera had few hot pixels to deal with.

Astro Art 8 is now available. I just upgraded from AA7 and I am looking forward to trying out all the new features. http://www.msb-astroart.com/

It was a calm night with pretty good seeing and PHD was playing quite well. Ignore the header at the top of the PHD screen.....I fired up the system with the ASI-290 / UO 80mm / AP900 configuration and it guided beautifully with the 50mm guide scope so I had not saved a new configuration when I did the screen shot. Seeing is typically the main reason for poor guiding from my experience. Whenever I get a night like that I save a screenshot to remind me that it is probably not my kit. The old CI-700 still surprises me with how well it still works even though it is almost 25 years old. (^8

Waiting for darkness.....150 mm F2.8 HNT on my trusty old CI-700 mount. Yes...the old girl still tracks great. (^8

The Tal 2 is a nice mount if you can find one. The one I have carries a 5" refractor quite well.

Great idea !!! Hmmmmm...This gives me some ideas for a future project. If you made the walls a bit taller the roof walls could then be shorter and it would allow the roof to be tilted more than 9o degrees which would give you more view of the sky.

It was a "smart shed" I had about 20 years ago. It was made by a company called "Thinking Outside" which is no longer in business these days. It was very easy to remove some fasteners and then slide part of the roof off to get access to the sky. It was fairly secure since it didn't call attention to itself as it looked like a common garden shed when it was closed up. I enjoyed having a permanent setup until we moved to a place that had a poor view of the sky. I have been using my portable "SkyBox" observatory since then and will soon be building a ROR observatory at my new low Bortle 2 dark site (SQM 21.99)

Here is another one I did with a Zeiss Sonar 180mm F2.8 lens. It worked but i was disappointed with the amount of chromatic aberration it had. You can never tell until you test it.