Trying out some new kit

[Benno]

Good afternoon, hope everyone is doing well.

I have amassed lots of brownie points and so the keeper of the purse strings allowed me to indulge in a couple of purchases. One being the QHYCCD Polemaster (splendid piece of kit, no more wet knees / neck creeks or poking myself in the head with Dec screw on the bask of the mount). The other being the Atik Infinity (another splendid piece of kit and software).

Well last night both items received first light. Polar alignment was a doddle and took a couple of minuets to complete, and then came the imaging with the Infinity. I usually use my DSLR's for imaging, so this type of deep space video imaging was quite new to me. However the results (straight out of the infinity software), are quite good. In the end I managed to get Andromeda, Bode's and the Triangulum galaxies.

So here they are, three shots from last night, not perfect but considering the relatively short exposure times I think they are not too bad.

The only hiccup I had was attaching the Infinity to my ED80, I connected the camera via an adapter with what I though was more than enough back focus however I could not achieve focus. So in the end I quickly popped on the diagonal then all was well. I will need to look at the distance required when connecting straight to the ED80 focus draw tube.

Best regards,

Benno.