Liking my new RedCat - IC1396 at 250mm

[Adreneline]

I got my second chance to use the new RedCat on Christmas Eve and I've got to say I am very pleased with my acquisition. I am by no means an expert but it gives every impression of being a very nice piece of kit with some serious imaging capability when used by someone who knows what they are doing. I set up to grab three targets, namely IC 1848 (the Soul), IC1396 (the Elephant's Trunk) and IC 443 (the Jellyfish) but despite CO saying it would be clear all night the clouds rolled in just after midnight (no doubt to give Santa extra cover) and so I only managed the first two.

This is my attempt at IC1396. I managed 24 x 180s of Ha, OIII and SII; I also took some Luminance using an L-3 filter but chose not to use it. Because my ASIair had given up the ghost (now fixed by excellent Christmas Day customer service at ZWO) I used SGPro to control the rig, including plate solving with ANSVR local on the PC. ASI1600MM-Pro at -20 degrees, gain 139, offset 50. Calibrated, registered and integrated in APP. Processed in PI using Starnet and then stars recombined in Affinity.

As ever C&C always welcome.

Thank you for looking and hope you all had a great Christmas!

Adrian

 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

What a great image. 🙂  very nice indeed.

I wish I had got off my backside and set up my gear on Christmas eve as it was the firsts real clear night for a long while up this end if the country.
I must make it a resolution to get on with building an obsy this year I may be more inclined to use the valuable clear nights then.

Steve

[Adreneline]

26 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

What a great image. 🙂  very nice indeed.

I wish I had got off my backside and set up my gear on Christmas eve as it was the firsts real clear night for a long while up this end if the country.
I must make it a resolution to get on with building an obsy this year I may be more inclined to use the valuable clear nights then.

 

Thank you for the generous comment Steve.

I've done everything I can to make my "set up every time" gear easy to setup because I don't have an obsy and I'm not likley to have one either. It was more of a faff this time because I had to use a NUC PC at the mount to run the necessary software so it probably took me best part of an hour to be up and imaging rather than the 15-20 minutes I've become accustomed to with the ASIair.

What's frustrating is it cleared up later in the night (once Santa had been) and I could have left the rig imaging and I may have got the Jellyfish as well!

Adrian

[teoria_del_big_bang]

9 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

What's frustrating is it cleared up later in the night (once Santa had been) and I could have left the rig imaging and I may have got the Jellyfish as well!

Always a dilemma when you are not sure the night will be dry and clear all night, which is often the case.

Steve

[geeklee]

Lovely Adrian.  That deep, moody type of palette is very appealing too.  Very nice data in there.

I look forward to the Soul and hopefully the Jellyfish.  My recent Samyang image of that area was very disappointing.  I always planned to go back with mono and the RedCat but ... so many projects, so little clear nights  

[Adreneline]

7 minutes ago, geeklee said:

Lovely Adrian.  That deep, moody type of palette is very appealing too.  Very nice data in there.

Thank you Lee. I much prefer the moody, pastel look - I can't believe space is garish but having said that I still like to see full colour images.

8 minutes ago, geeklee said:

I look forward to the Soul

I did something with the data - it's not great but it is a start.

Thanks again.

Adrian

[simmo39]

Yep, looks to be a very good piece of kit. You are doing a great job with it!

[Adreneline]

Just now, simmo39 said:

Yep, looks to be a very good piece of kit. You are doing a great job with it!

Thank you

I am really pleased so far with the RedCat; the build quality is really good and optically it seems to be performing. I think the move away from 135mm to 250mm is going to require me to sort out guiding on my CEM25-EC making my light-weight rig not quite so light weight!

Adrian

[simmo39]

2 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

Thank you

I am really pleased so far with the RedCat; the build quality is really good and optically it seems to be performing. I think the move away from 135mm to 250mm is going to require me to sort out guiding on my CEM25-EC making my light-weight rig not quite so light weight!

Adrian

That is always the way!