M57 with ATIK 16IC-S

[ncjunk]

At last the combination of not working, not raining and not in trouble

with the wife come together to enable a night of playing with the

old telescope.

Thanks to georgei for the drivers for my ATIK 16IC.

Its the first time I have been able to play with all the new gear and

there are a few interesting teething problems.

1. I made the pier 1.3 meters high....big mistake, this makes the telescope eyepiece close to 2.5 m high I now need mountain climbing gear.

2. Where the mount attaches to the pier it is too complicated when putting on and packing away it needs to be simplified.

Still, I am getting the hang of focusing but the guiding just was a failure possibly due to the guide scope being 400 mm and the main scope 1600mm.

Regards

Neil C

[mik]

Good first start Neil and well framed.

Mick

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

A very nice result Neil.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[algol]

ace pic, is that the central star in the ring too? nicely done

[Sam]

Nice work Neil! Glad you got some clear sky. The central star is visible so well done!

Sam

[RobH]

Well done Neil. :hello1:

Cheers

Rob

[Ferox]

Very nice image Neil.

[LostNSpace]

Not a bad image for a 1st attempt Neil

well done

Mark

[lunator]

Neil

Well dome the image.

it's a very good start.

Cheers

Ian

[SteveL]

... but the guiding just was a failure possibly due to the guide scope being 400 mm and the main scope 1600mm

What kind of issues were you having? Which guiding program did you use?

[jcm]

Hi Neil,

You should be able to guide using a 400mm guide scope. ( ST80 ?)

Used my ST80 to guide successfully at F12 ( 1560mm)

John

PS Good image , looks like you are on your way.

[ncjunk]

Thanks for the kind replies. My guiding is using PHD

and when I took this I was with the 400mm I tried again

last night with a X2 Barlow but with no Joy. I have had the

guiding working just with the main scope but I suspect one

of the following

1 the Guide scope is mounted in a blue peter way, may be excessive flexure.

2 I balanced the scope with the eyepiece in (used it to align a little easier) but

didn´t re-balance when I attached the Camera and filter wheel. Plus all this gear

on the poor old LXD75 is causing it to sweat a bit. So I am wondering if the scope

is unbalanced causing too much drift.

Thanks

Neil C

[Plastic chicken]

Brilliant!!

PC