NGC 6992 (Eastern Veil) - Collimation finally sorted?

[pipnina]

A few weeks ago I was having some trouble aligning the secondary mirror of my 130PDS, and in images that showed strongly as tilt. With the assistance of my sister (bit fiddly to do all the alan keys by yourself while holding the secondary in place) i finally got it probably 99% on target, though still not central (one primary clip not visible, another only partly visible).

I got the chance to test out the new alignment two nights ago, and I am pretty pleased with the result!

This is just under an hour's worth. The sky transparency was on the good side that night, I could have sworn I was able to make out the cygnus rift while setting it all up.

I think this might be the best I've managed to get my focus, thanks to a little help from bright Vega and the strong diffraction spikes (bright enough to see when the spikes became "pixel sharp").

Sadly the HEQ5's synscan thinks the middle of the eastern veil is right at the top of the object,and the bottom of it was cut off. Does anyone know of a way to input RA/DEC coords into the handset?

That was not the only mount problem, I don't know if the HEQ5's PEC survives reboots (i.e. turning off and on again) but if it does I may have ruined mine. I noticed in my 1 min subs that I get a sharp one, one with elongated stars in one direction, sharp again, then elongated going back in the other direction (i.e. the image position oscilates). And when I used the PEC utility (Without reading the manual first ) I had the controls left along for about 20 seconds, moved it right for one minute then left for a minute again... Which sounds too convenient.

Either way, I think the image has come out nicely, even showing some Ha despite my camera's IR filter being in place. Hopefully when astro dark comes back I will be able to give this object another go.

[xtreemchaos]

love that shot Pipp, well done mate. charl.

[emadmoussa]

Very nice!!