First Light 12" F3.6

[ReaPerMan]

I've been on a bit of a rampage for the last 2 months buying up all of Tandum's gear. Finally it's ensconced in my nice new ROR shed and sitting atop a shiny black EQ8. Naturally there are many steps to follow to get it all set up and ready to go. Most but not all of these have been followed with a good dose of "Dammit I want to image now". Collimation is still a bit off, the guide camera wasn't playing ball, The polar align was only rough and when all is taken into account the setup was less than stella (sorry about the pun!). The system was unguided so the subs were 20 sec, for a total of 5.6 Minutes. I have colour but it sucks badly! A good start for such a short integration time. Bodes well for when it’s all going properly.

Now all I have to do is pay for this lovely gear... adverts coming soon for GSO RC10CF, ED127, QHY10 and Orion SteadyStar AO. Drop me a line if you want to be first before the advert.

Naturally in this season what would be the first image??? M42, what a shocker. I'ts come out not bad for a rough quicky and I'm looking forward to getting better results soon (Atik 11000 on the way!!)...

GSO F4 Newtonian with ASA WYNNE 0.9 corrector (F3.6). EQ8, QHY 10 17 X 20 sec subs, processed with CCDStack and PS6.

Thanks for looking

All the best

Paul :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

All sounds very exciting Paul, a new imaging rig is so exciting, great stuff :thumbsup: M42 is a good starter :)

Mike

[ReaPerMan]

Thanks Mike.. I'm looking forward to having it all dialled in and with the Obs there is so much less to do when it's all humming. This gear is a bit big to be dragging around all the time! (for some of us! :P)

Less faffing around should equal more Pics!

Cheers

Paul

[Tandum]

Looks like it's all working Paul. I ran that image through ccd inspector for a qhy10 and got these results which look pretty good. Colimation is as close as you'll probably get it and FHWM is coming back at 2.4 which has to be close to seeing. Good luck with it all.

[ReaPerMan]

Thank you for doing that Robin, it's very encouraging that I've been doing something right! I was looking at a star test and thought there was just a little bit of tweaking to do (I've heard so much about how difficult these fast Newts are to collimate). I think the slight aberration that I was chasing might be that Tube flex that we discussed. I have a longer dovetail that I'm going to try and see if that helps. Now looking at the figures I might leave that alone and focus on getting the guiding going. I've got 3 nights at work now but it looks like the fine weather is going to hold until I'm on days off again.

all the best

Paul

[RickS]

A very promising set up, Paul. Look forward to seeing what you can produce with it.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Ross G]

Nice looking capture Paul and nice looking setup.

Good luck.

Ross.