First light with Askar FMA180 V.2

[Snoani]

Good morning

After considering the best option for me to provide a widefield setup I settled on the Askar FMA180, which by happy accident was ordered at the time that they swapped over to version 2, because works great with an EAF.  

I have created a system that while not as streamlined as it is out of the box, it is still small enough that it fits in my travel astro bag with my Star Adventurer GTi and therefore gives me a goto setup that I can take almost anywhere with me.  

It arrived in early March and typically I have had the longest period without a single clear sky around the new moon periods that I have experienced and so have only just managed to test is property this week.  Due to a light polluted northern sky widefield objects are currently limited at my location at this time of year.  I therefore chose IC1396 and battled a heavy gradient in processing but I have to say I am very happy with the performance of the scope and the resulting image. The detail is good and gives exactly what I was hoping for.  

This image is 6 hours of L-Extreme data and 2 hours of RGB for the stars, processed in Pixinsight.  

I'm really looking forward to widefield crack at M31 in a few months.

I hope that you like.  

Jem

[simmo39]

V nice! That's a good little set up. 

[Lee_P]

A great result, and I like how you've coupled everything together into a small package.