new gear, first lights

[Erquy]

Hi

After 6 months enjoying greatly my 1st telescope, a little skymax 102 altAz goto (see my gallery), and getting the virus, then went for major upgrade: C8 on new eq VX mount.

First of all, really great, easy to set up, great HC and connectics while still portable (on the limit!). Amazing goto, spot on! And easy to polar align with all star feature.

Then try 1st picture despite conditions were far optimal (almost full moon, saturn very close to the moon, and pictures taken around 11.00 pm which is not that dark in south sweden today). Also seeing was average. Pictures taken with Canon EOS1100D, unmooded, no filter. Rough focus (waiting for a bahtinov mask)

Saturn: 2,5 barlow, avi in movrec *5, 3000 frame process in PIPP and stack in registax 6

M51: 13* 60 sec unguidded at 1600 ISO, f10 (i tried with the F6.3 but way too much light, not dark enough). nice round stars (70% OK). I tried 2 minutes subs, but too much light and eggy stars in 1 out of 2 (this was my first polar alignement, need to work it out further I think -I did quite rapidly with all star alignement without making it with high magnisfication EP, so certainly can do better)

Not that great, but thinking about the conditions, that´s pretty OK. Let´s wait for darker nights!!

[Adamar98]

Take some flats next time and I think your m51 will look great. Very good effort!

[Erquy]

A 2sd night imaging and now a bit more time concentrating on the real job.

Happy with that saturn (Canon EOS1100D unmodded, 2,5 barlow, no filters).

Seeing was good this time but I have seen better (used 30% of about 15 000 frames, preprocess with PIPP for sorting + getting right colors -using the histogram strectch option, to be tickle as not automatically pre-selected when processing as "plenatary" is selected, a little wonder in my case as without this, saturn is always yellow/brownish without its blue tone -a tip maybe for many using DSLR for saturn, as I often see posted such poor colored saturn when shot with a DSLR, while PIPP´s option seems to adress this very well -and I have not played changing the standard options of it)

and also M13 and M57, still trial, relatively short total time

http://stargazerslou...n-iso-1600-f10/

http://stargazerslou...n-iso-1600-f10/

Yesterday as seeing was good I also took time to check collimation on arcturus at high manification (8 mm EP + barlow and also on laptop screen before shot on saturn) and it sounds very much it is NOT. So I need to work this out (I have to learn, I never had to collimate my little MAK, always wonderful and stable collimation on that one).

So well happy about my new scope so far, hope simply to work out simply the collimation and nights to be back really dark again (it is not really dark any longer up here scandinavia).