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M51 using LX90 8" on an HEQ5!

Captain Tweaky

By Captain Tweaky
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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Captain Tweaky

Captain Tweaky

Posted
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This was my first effort at using my LX90 8" OTA mounted on an HEQ5 Pro Synscan. Initially I could not balance the setup, but I bought an extended balance weight bar from Astro Engineering and that seemed to work well. The whole setup was guided by my trusty SW ST80 with a QHY5 using PHD and it worked perfectly - the graph looked really good.

The camera is an ATIK 314L+ with a Brightstar Quantum electronic filterwheel and a Meade 6.3 focal reducer in the optical path. Unfortunately I didn't use a Bahtinov mask to focus and so there is a little issue there - so the image size is reduced a bit to compensate!! I managed 8 x 500 seconds luminance and 5 each RGB x 300 seconds and this is it:

post-10577-0-58635000-1339075145_thumb.j

Against all expectation the LX90 8" seemed to be OK on the HEQ5 with the ST80 on top. There was speculation that it may all be a bit overweight, but as a first attempt it all seemed to work perfectly.

Yours aye

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Captain Tweaky

Captain Tweaky

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Nice image Dave, it was an interesting night, and you seem to have got really good data. I bet you cant wait to get more colour in to it

There's two things that I really want to do:

  • Better focus
  • Ha data

And we haven't had a clear night since I took those subs at TH! How bad is that?

Thank you kindly everyone for your comments - they really are much appreciated.

Yours aye

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Captain Tweaky

Captain Tweaky

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Yep, nice result. :laugh: Folk used to say that an 8" SCT was too much for an HEQ5 but I used one and even managed 15min subs at the full 2m focal lenght - the HEQ5 is a cracking mount

Very pleased to hear you say that 'blinky' - I am a bit reluctant to upgrade because of the weight of the NEQ6 and I've managed to become quite accustomed to the HEQ5, so many thanks for the reassurance.

Yours aye

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Pete Presland

Pete Presland

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Yep, nice result. :laugh: Folk used to say that an 8" SCT was too much for an HEQ5 but I used one and even managed 15min subs at the full 2m focal lenght - the HEQ5 is a cracking mount

could not agree more the heq5 is a great mount,so much better than the eq5.

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ultranova

ultranova

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A cracking image for a first time set up,, I have a feeling theres going to be some top notch stuff from that set up real soon, and im looking forward to seeing it, as the rest of the guys have said, things can only get better, well done

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Guest

Guest

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Good results, well done - - Against all advice I'd read about weight issues I have continually imaged with my Celestron C8-n/ST-80 on the EQ-5 Pro Synscan with no problems. I now intend to put my C10-n on it in the autumn and see how that works :grin: Finding that I could image with this weight on the EQ-5 saved me £1k on a HEQ model - just goes to show that advice is no substitute for experiment :grin: .

David

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