Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101) Ha - First light(ish) for CEM40

[x6gas]

I bought an iOptron CEM40 mount back in May...  there was a bit of a production issue with the first one so Nick at Altair Astro had to source me a replacement (he was great, as ever, by the way) but that took a while... Once it arrived I tried imaging M13 to add to my Messier images and as a shakedown for the mount but a problem with my filter wheel meant that I collected a LOT of one channel so I didn't really have anything to post... and then cloud, and work, and cloud.  Long story short, this weekend has been the first in a long time where I've been able to capture some data.

First and foremost, I have to say the mount is outstanding.  It guided for two nights solid without missing a beat.  Admittedly I had to trash the first night's data because my focus was off but was getting 2 arcsec p-2-p and 0.5-0.6 arcsec RMS... I don't have great seeing and this was with PHD settings straight out of the box (similar results for hysteresis and predictive PEC).

PHD was also reporting pretty poor polar alignment (long story regarding my new peer for another time).

Now funny story:  I'm still learning Pixinsight and have been having trouble calibrating my lights and during the processing I completely forgot to align the light frames; I missed that step and just stacked them and, honestly, the stars were pretty much as round as the properly aligned stack which really brought home how good the guiding was over the whole session.

Anyway, here's the result preprocessing in 'ole faithful AstroArt with a quick stretch in PS5.

Scope: Tak FSQ85; Mount: iOptron CEM40; Camera: Atik 460ex; Filters: Astrodon; Guiding: Atik OAG/PHD2

38 x 600s Ha for a total integration time of 6 hours 20 minutes.

OK it won't win any awards but I think it demonstrates that this mount has real potential.  The CEM40 ia also a lovely looking thing - sadly my CEM60 is a bit of an ugly duckling (though it too performs well).

[souls33k3r]

That's a mighty fine result. Mind if i ask what's wrong with your CEM60? 

[x6gas]

8 hours ago, souls33k3r said:

That's a mighty fine result. Mind if i ask what's wrong with your CEM60? 

Nothing wrong with the CEM60 at all  - very far from it, it's a terrific mount (though the CNC machined finish of the CEM40 is a bit step up astatically).  However, the plan is that the CEM60 will be more or less permanently mounted on my pier and the 40 will be a grab and go field mount for some dark sky trips (sadly I've never really got on with my astrotrac, though of course that's a very different animal.

[ApophisAstros]

yes good guiding and nice image and  i like to monitor how the session went ,

PHD is great , and especially the log , this was my last session just on EQR6-R on tripod on patio.

Roger