First light with my SW ED80 and a strange artifact in my images.

[Danjc]

I did set it up on Wednesday for a spot of visual but last night I went for it and also attempted guiding for the first time. In true fashion nothing seemed to work first time but I persevered and eventually managed to get 300 sec subs even though my guiding seemed way off but hey.

I didn't plan on imaging M42 but after CDC had a wobbler my last sync was next to M42 so thought I would give it a bash.

I feel the core is a little blown and the processing not great but overall considering all the messing around I had to do I was just pleased to image anything. 

 

So here's the problem I have on some of my subs a line (see pics) that I cant work out what it is. I have checked the tube optics and they are spotless as it the FF/FR. Dew wasn't a problem and had bands on anyway so it comes down to maybe the camera and or the Skytech CLS but both seem clean. The only two things I think it could be are there is a little light able to get into the focus assembly where the focus knob goes through he assembly and my laptop screen saver did kick in every now and again despite me sorting the settings out and was on that side of the scope. Second thing was (don't laugh) when I got the CLS I had a rotten cold and when I was putting it in the camera I sneezed and didn't quite move my noggin in time so It needed a little clean ! Visually it looks clean but as I came in this morning it misted up and had a little line/smudge on it but was not visible once it had de misted. 

 

 

Both are 300 sec subs taken with a canon 1100D using APT.

[ebdons]

Hi don't know about the defect but it looks like a hair maybe, you can get these if only a eyelash hair? M42 core oversaturated a bit, been there done it, I use the Astronomik CLS CCD filter and I reckon it would be better to use the UHC CCD. sometimes esp on brighter objects. did M42 last nite but phd went awol again, this is what I got from 9x3 min subs and some haze as well. qhy10 edt80 cls cdd. keep going for it.

[carastro]

That's pretty good on the whole, needs a bit of gradient dealing with and perhaps HLVG to get rid of the green.  It looks like a dust bunny at the top, but apart from the core which you know about a pretty good effort.

As regards the line on your subs, you say it is not on all of them.  My first reaction was it was a branch of a tree/or shrub/ some sort of pole.  I am thinking if it was a hair it would be likely to cause diffraction spikes on the bright stars (I had that happen to me once) but could depend where it is in the optics. 

Carole