Crabby Lodestar

[rfdesigner]

I'm slowly getting my homebrew drive system tracking better. My newly aquired Lodestar is helping me to pinpoint errors and tune things correctly.

Last night I had a bit of fun imaging, just to see how things were progressing. Well despite some thin mistyness and a cresent moon I decided to point the scope at M1.

I haven't bothered with flats or biases, only darks.

Anyway checking against Stellarium, I can identify all the catalogue stars on the planetarium in my image, and quite a few more that are too dim to be in the catalogue.

Image: composite of 60x4s images at prime focus, taken in 1x1 progressive scan mode on the 12" f5 newt.

Just thought I'd post here to show what can be achieved with this excellent little guider, and a less than excellent astro imager.

Derek

Points to work on:

Collimation shifted.. something is loose so better get that sorted

Stepper motor to worm coupling started slipping.. and it's not a tightness thing, I just need a 'proper' one, not a grub screw piece of rubbish that induces PEC.

Having corrected those I'd better get the hand controller hooked up.