IC1396 (Borg first light)

[SteveL]

Usually it takes weeks and weeks to get a clear sky after new kit arrives, but it was threatening to clear last night so I set up.

The clouds didnt really want to play ball as they were suppsoed to, so I only really managed to get about an hour of really clear skies, but I was just glad to be outside. Nice to see the Milkyway stretching down to the southern horizon again, and the return of astrodark again.

As much as I would like to have had a full night imaging, I was happy wth getting the Borg out and imaging. Call this a dry run of things to come

Almost zero flex in the system (0.28 pixels per hour or thereabouts). I was also imaging with the WO66 but that was more to find the corretc back focus distance for the reducer, so I wasnt expecting much out of that one.

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD

OTA: Borg 77EDII @ f/4.3

Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + PHD

Imaging: M25C + MaximDL, 5×600s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (51 bias, 51 flats)

Stacked: DeepSkyStacker

Post Process: ImagesPlus + PSCS2

(Click on image for larger but slightly noisy version)

[Ford Prefect]

Fantastic first light Steve, looks like you and that borg are going to be a good match

[Deneb]

plenty of ha, wonderful image.

[barkis]

Sheesh! The future is Borg.

You know you are gonna smittle a lot of others buying this Instrument?

Ron.

[Taff]

Hi Steve' Thats a nice capture of the neb.Mark

[SteveL]

You know you are gonna smittle a lot of others buying this Instrument?

Yes, sorry!

[ollypenrice]

That's great, Steve. What a field! You'll be rather chuffed with Borg, methinks. I'm just about to post my own work in progress on this one but I started with colour. It is such a marvellous object.

Again, great start.

Olly

[Paxo]

Nice one Steve, that's a fantastic amount of Ha you've captured there. Looking forward to seeing it in action at Kelling. Just out of interest (for possible future plans), what size image circle do you get, would it illuminate a full 35mm frame.

Steve..

[SteveL]

The Borgs do aparently illuminate a 35mm, with some vignetting falloff... if only I had a H36/H36 to try it with ;-)

[Paxo]

The Borgs do aparently illuminate a 35mm, with some vignetting falloff... if only I had a H36/H36 to try it with ;-)

Funnily enough Steve, I've got a brand spanking new one in front of me now, and it's not long to Kelling I can feel a plan brewing.....

Steve..

[SteveL]

Whats the attachment thread on the H35/H36 units? And how far from the front face is the imaging chip?

[Tim]

It's amazing how much of the background glow those Borgs pickup. Have always seen that to be the case in Eddies pics, and this one looks to be just as capable. Great stuff.

[Paxo]

Steve,

The camera is one of the new SXVR H36's. The primary connection is a Takahashi sized female thread M72 x 1mm, the front plate to chip distance is 18mm. There is a spacer included with gives a male thread which gives a 36mm distance.

As the camera is mono, I connect it through an adapted True Technology Filter wheel which has a M54 x 0.75mm female connection (Takahashi wide T ring specification. This adds about 30mm to the distance but cannot be used with the spacer ring, giving a 48mm distance. I'm currently awaiting an adaptor being made to allow me to use this with the FLT field flattener on the FLT110 which has a strange 79mm, T, or SCT thread.

Steve..

[Beyond_Vision]

A great first light Steve is this a mosiac or has it been cropped as the aspect ratio doesn't look like an APS-c sensor size?

Regards

Kevin

[SteveL]

TJ - yep, i spotted that to. One of the reasons that convinced me to get the Borg (along with the extremly flat field)

Paxo - I`ll see if I can find an adapter

Kevin - not cropped, it just looks odd cos its in portrait rather than landscape

[minimalist]

Awesome image Steve, what a sprinkling of stars in that image, the detail is fantastic!

Daniel