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M38 - First Light - GSO 6RC

jgs001

By jgs001
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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jgs001

jgs001

Posted
Posted

Finally, managed to first light my new scope...

Thought I'd try something simple (ish...)

Had some trouble with the finder scope (I hate them... it's gotta go), I used the one that came with my 80ED... need to get another Skysurfer...

Balanced up approximately, before carting it all out, setup, realised, before trying to track and focus, I'd forgotten to polar align in my excitement to test out the RC, polar aligned, focused, although finding a star to focus on was tricky... Setup the goto, cheated as I hate the finder, and used a single star, slewed to M38 and dropped bang in the middle of the FOV.. CDC and EQMOD Rock...

oh... fitted both camping may dew shields (I will get proper ones for Astro_Baby as soon as I've bought all the other things I need more ;))

Setup the guiding, all seemed to be going well... First exposure finished, now I was outside with the Bino's when I heard the camera click. Checked it, and every star was a double, as if I'd booted the leg, which I knew I hadn't done, although I had reached past to grab the extension tube, which I don't need to get focus, so thought it might be that. Anyway, the PHD graph settled down, so I let it get on with it... 2 minutes in, it did it again, the graph showed an enormous kick in RA in the opposite direction to the first one... that's odd... the laptop was making an odd noise too... Thought I'd stop the guiding, the noise stopped with it. Started it again, no noise... Left it for 3 minutes, no kick in RA and the OSC-index was about 0.38. Ok... started the run again...

I got 2 usable subs... the third was partially orange, the fourth you could barely see stars, and the last, well... I checked on the laptop with VNC (I'd gone in for a cuppa) and found that the guiding was totally out of whack... looked out... solid orange sky..

*sigh*... again...

Never mind.

Here's the end result.. I'm not totally convinced on the focus, or it might be collimation... I just don't know... or it might even have been some mist looking at the faint glow around the stars... and I've got diffraction spikes... real one :p

2 x 5 minutes @ ISO800, 12 flats, and darks.

Imaging : GSO 6RC, Canon 450d, SW LPR, Nebulosity 2

Guiding : Konus Vista 80s, QHY5v, PHD

Mount : HEQ5 SynTrek

m38-2x5iso800-6rc.jpg

Now the RC's are supposed to be really flat fields... I'm not sure how to tell that, not sure I can personally, but the edge stars look good to me, much better than the 80ED... I've done nothing to the stars themselves... just a couple of stretches, a colour boost, and a couple of passes of Noel's deep sky noise reduction.

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Complicated business, isn't it!?! But good to see this up and running.

My understanding is that the RC is not inherently perfectly flat because I believe the first ones used curved photographic plates. Isn't there a flattener as an option, or do you have that already?

Anyway you will soon be fully sorted. New kit is always a challenge, and this looks very promising...

Olly

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jgs001

jgs001

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Thanks guys.

Nadeem, if you can get a wide enough field (600mm and APS-C) and include the smiley face (NGC1907 is like a tear drop), there's some emission nebula around the face too.

It is at that Olly, but I was expecting it to be this time (new kit and all), having to get the balance point on the dual mount sorted etc. There is a FR/FF for the RC, but it's a lot of money, and wasn't in the budget at this time, I'm sad to say. The field's that I've seen put out on the net and checked do seem to show pretty good flatness.

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jgs001

jgs001

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Cheers Rob. Hopefully, only when is a good question...

I'm going to redo my little auriga project and use this scope for the clusters, and I want to finish off my M42 if I can... before moving on to next september...

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steppenwolf

steppenwolf

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Well done, John, this is a good start for the new R/C despite the tracking problems. R/Cs are not renowned for their flat fields - what they are renowned for is the lack of coma and that is shown pretty well in your image. The stars to the top RH corner are slightly less good than the other 4 corners but these are indeed better than the ED80 would achieve. I don't think this was the fairest test for the new 'scope though, perhaps a little rushed (and who can blame you with the excitement growing!) and tracking issues as well.

Looking forward to seeing more from this 'scope when the rest of the kit is behaving as well!

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jgs001

jgs001

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Thanks very much all...

Steve, I think I may know what the cause of those star shapes was, and it should now be sorted... (User error :))... I'll bring it along this evening, and you can have a look at it in the flesh so to speak...

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