It's marvellous what a difference Collimation makes....Starless Starnet++ version

[Andy01 (Andy)]

My stars weren't looking round/right so my telescope building friend Dr. Diego kindly paid a house call & inspected & removed the secondary mirror assembly from my 10" CF Newt.

Turned out it was way out of square and misaligned. (My fault for fiddling with it!) Interesting too, in that it appeared to collimate ok. However, this was misleading as results showed wonky stars, which was quickly picked up by Strongman Mike's closer inspection of my previous NB image.

It's now reassembled and this is the result, 5.5 hrs Ha processed in APP using Drizzle - nice round stars corner to corner - Happy dance time

If the weather ever improves over Melbourne I'll redo the RGB stars and create a HaRGB image.
Did I mention that I really love this 'scope!

UPDATE: Check out this starless version created with Starnet++ (on my mac too!) what a truly remarkable, incredible bit of software!
I just ran the app - no additional work done at all

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Looks much better Andy

Mike

[Atmos (Colin)]

Beautiful stars across the frame there Andy

[alpal]

Nice work Andy,
now the problem will be to keep it in collimation
without the help from Dr. Diego.
I use a method with a laser aligner joined to a Takahashi 2x Barlow & I look for
the paper re-enforcement shadow from the center of
the mirror reflected back on to the collimator screen.
On my old 8" f6 Newt. it was easy but now
with a 10" f4 it's much more difficult to get right
but it's worth every minute spent on it.




cheers
Allan

[multiweb (Marc)]

Great field.

[Andy01 (Andy)]

New Starless version added - using Starnet++

Amazing software - best star removal I've ever seen