DDM60 First Light

[Atmos]

Well the clouds mostly cleared at about 12:30 am this morning so I ended up staying up for most of the night playing around with the Autoslew software trying to get to grips on how it worked. Ended up working with a PA of 1 arcmin in ALT and 3.5 arcmin in AZ so given that I am quite happy with the tracking results.

The seeing was pretty terrible as I was expecting, not only because of the forecasted high level cloud which turned into passing haze by maybe 3:30 am but Meteoblue gave a "seeing" in the red (being really bad) so I was kinda surprised to be below 3.5" all night.

Both images are 12x300s so an hour on each. The first is the Helix while the second is NGC 456 which just happened to be a green smudge on TSX and I clicked on and said "Go for it!" They're pretty quick and dirty and so is the processing :D

Next thing to gets to grips with is the Sequence software, I read the manual over the weekend but at 4am trying to set it up, wasn't a good idea :P

[graham.hobart]

:thumbsup:nice one colin, a new toy to play with :D

[RickS]

A promising start, Colin.

[topheart]

Hi Colin,

All the best with the new setup!!
Very exciting.

Cheers,
Tim

[Placidus]

You're showing that outer chevron at 5 o'clock in your Helix image. That's difficult to get. Well done! :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Lovely round stars. Its always a pleasure to see them in the downloads. Its so easy to get eggy stars and it seems like a constant battle to get round stars so congrats!

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Well...it certainly looks like it works Col :thumbsup:

So, were these unguided 5min exposures?

Mike

[atalas]

Ok, your just plain showing off with your tight little round stars Colin! :lol: buuut,I'm very happy It's going so well dude:thumbsup:

[Somnium]

That is a really nice mount Colin. i was just wondering, what happens if you lose power? i assume the direct drive just stops, is there a chance the scope will hit the mount?

[Atmos]

It was nice just getting it out under the stars for a change! Only so much I can do. On the plus side the encoders are accurate enough to detect me breathing next to it when I was inside, if I reached to the keyboard my body movement would register!




Definitely nothing more than a start at this stage but I am enjoying the new challenge.



I have done some heavy noise reduction and stretching and it certainly shows by spewing up more noise :P I tried calibrating them but I need to redo my Master Bias for some reason.
When it get it running nicely I'll push close to 30 min subs.



CCDInspector saying aspects of 7ish with 300s subs and a not crash hot polar alignment. Checking that in the morning I was stoked! I did a test 600s and got an aspect of 15 which is closer to the best I'd usually get out of the EQ6. Sometimes I'd get a 9 but that was usually associated with focus drift!



Completely unguided! I've lost nights worth of data due to guider issues over and over, selling my guider scope soon :P



Everything looks round after a 50% down sample :lol:



When I lose power it stops pretty quick as there is nothing to keep it going. Last night the camera power cable got caught and it stopped pretty quickly when it detected a a massive increase in amps. Unlike my EQ6 if it hits something it stops and doesn't keep driving into the mount all night :P

Everything is perfectly balanced so without power it just sits there.

[SimmoW]

Nice start Colin! Very tight results. Sheesh, a serious amount of new gear being bought lately! *looks around innocently*.

[Atmos]

That's why it's so cloudy in Melbourne!

[Stevec35]

Certainly looks promising Colin.

Cheers

Steve

[strongmanmike]

Cool...sounds rather Tak NJP'esque :D

Mike

[Slawomir]

Awesome result Colin.

The better the mount, the better the data. Looking forward to seeing those elusive faint fuzzies that you will be bringing up in your razor sharp photos :thumbsup:

[Atmos]

Your NJP performs brilliantly with its 0.25" RMS :P A month ago up at Heathcote I was throwing out half of my 150s subs due to guide issues. No idea why but about half of my subs were elongated and non usable, can only imagine backlash or something. Other nights it'll do 600" all night without a hitch, even managed a one hour exposure that was reasonable. Not perfect but reasonable :)

Point being, it'll be nice to use a mount that is consistent!



Don't know how many faint fuzzies I'll be getting 18km from Melbourne CBD :P

[Slawomir]

Sure more than before mount upgrade and definitely more than me riding on EQ6 only 2km from Brisbane CBD and right next to Suncorp stadium :P

[Atmos]

Haha you win!!
I at least own a dark site that, like all of SE Aus, clouds over most New Moons ;)

[Maurice]

No guiding...that's cool...
A promising result Colin.

cheers
Maurice

[codemonkey]

Looking good Colin! I'm jealous! I wish I could get 5min unguided subs - that's the longest I'm doing with the ASI1600 so I'd be totally unguided then. Ah, one day...

[multiweb]

That's impressive. This is certainly going to throw a spanner in the works for other high end mount manufacturers. Interesting times ahead.

[Atmos]

Once it is up and running it performs magnically, my setup time is still INCREDIBLY SLOW!
Not a problem with the mount, just my inability to get the tripod within 2° of PA. At home this will not be an issue when I can mark the ground but it isn't as helpful when I am on the move.

Of course, what i need more than anything is clear skies :P