First Light with Mars

[Nigella Bryant]

Hi all, after my obsy rebuild just getting the telescope set up. Did the polar alignment last night but saw that the telescope was out of collimation and after spending two hours fighting with PA I wasn't going down that road at 1am. Anyway I slewed the scope over to Mars and it tracked that perfectly at f30 so I'm pleased with the PA. I was curious about how the new to me scope would perform despite needing collimation and I'm pretty pleased. Took an Avi of Mars and even though not prefect it bodes well I think. C11 XLT CT. Also used an older camera a Zwo Asi 120mm USB2 so wasn't the best. I want to try at RGB and the Zwo Asi 178mm in the coming Mars season so hopefully getting all the gremlins out now.  Anyway, enough of my excuses, here is the first light from "The Phoenix Complex."

Edited September 1, 2020 by Nigella Bryant

[si@nite]

Well done on your first light mars image, not always an easy planet to capture and process, but collimation is critical with scts especially high resolution planetary imaging!

 

[CraigT82]

Not bad at all, definitely some potential like you say. Hopefully will only need to do collimation once being permanently mounted. 

[Nigella Bryant]

57 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Not bad at all, definitely some potential like you say. Hopefully will only need to do collimation once being permanently mounted. 

Yeah, hopefully only need to do the collimation once as you say. Scope was posted a while ago to me and I've had the corrector plate off to clean surfaces and install a new finder bracket so I will need to recollimate xxx

[morimarty]

Well done on your first light mars image a C11 is not easy to handle especially at f30.

[Nigella Bryant]

15 minutes ago, morimarty said:

Well done on your first light mars image a C11 is not easy to handle especially at f30.

Thanks, appreciate your comment. Been used to a 12inch f4 newt which I still have so yeah, it's new to me.