Another side by side test

[emyliano2000]

Hi guys,

On Saturday I decided to load my Hypertuned Gen2 EQ6 mount to its limits with a side by side setup and see what results I get out of it. The setup looked like a Christmas tree with all the cables conected

The hardest part was to align both the scopes to aim in the same place and the DEC balancing which took me quite a while but did it in the end.

So my tragets for the night were, IC 1805 (The Heart Nebula) with the TS 65 quadruplet + Canon 700D and the 9x50 guider mounted on top of it on one side

and Melotte 15 with the 8" newtonian + Canon 450D on the other side.

Because my visibility is quite restricted I keep the tripod legs extended to nearly the max and I'm using an extension tube for EQ6 too.

I made a DIY marine ply leg spreder and I hung 10kg weights to the center bolt to increase it's stability. The tripod legs are sitting on antivibration pads.

I think I should've lowered the tripod legs to the min and remove the extension tube because a lot of the frames came out with eggy stars but because I never had a single session this long I decided to stack them all to see what comes out of it.

The reason of the egg stars might've been because of the weight of the setup, but I tend to belive it was the wind which wasn't strong but at that hight "every little helps"

APT was working great with both the cameras and syncronised dithering.

Here is IC 1805. 40x600sec ISO800, 50 flats, 100 bias

and Melotte 15 40x600sec ISO 800, 50 Flats and 100 Bias

I can't say these are the greatest images but if I were to use the best ones I would've ended up with only 3.5 hours of data and I was very curious about the noise from such a large number of frames.

Anyway, I am pleased with what came out of it and I will definitely do it again with the mount lowered to the min possible. My plan is to get at least 15 hours of good data for both the targets.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Emil

 

[wxsatuser]

Dual rigs can be a devil to get right.

Anyway, you got two reasonable images even with the slightly eggy stars.