M42-first light with my upgraded setup

[ozstockman]

I was waiting for clear sky for weeks and was lucky yesterday I could not miss opportunity to test all that was upgraded in last two months.

The first picture shows 36 minutes of M42 taken through my new VC200L and a QHY8, autoguided with a QHY5 and a new guiding scope(Pro-Optic 90mm MAK lens with FL 5.6)

9x4mins light frames + 3 flats

It all was stacked in DSS, levels and curves done in PS CS2 and finally it was slightly processed in Noiseware(Community edition)


On the second image you can see my both new scopes resting after a long night :-)

Hope you will enjoy it

cheers,

Mike

[Hagar]

Nice image Mike, Very nice setup. I like the little Mak guide scope. Fits nicely under the VC tube.
Keep them coming. Is this image at f9 or at f6.4 with the FR added?

[Garyh]

Good one Mike! Just done a similar shot with the new 8" newt as a test shot! But the seeing has been rather lousy!
Shall post it later.
cheers Gary

[RB]

That's a lovely image Mike.
In the right hands, those QHY8's certainly can deliver the goods.

Looking forward to more from you.

[AlexN]

nice shot with a nice setup.. I love the little mak guide scope.. How do you go finding guide stars?

[Ric]

A very nice capture Mike, there is some good depth the nebulosity.

[ozstockman]

Thanks guys. It was taken with a vixen F6.4 FR. I didn't center M42 well but I guess it's still not that bad.

This little MAK is certainly worth $150 that I paid for it 3 weeks ago. It's much less than a kilo, it's quite fast and I don't need to use any adapters to atach it to my QHY5. Moreover there is no noticeable mirror shift presented in its focuser.
Also one day I was complying to Jeff when he came to pick up some of my stuff that it's strange that with such a fast scope it's hard to find a guiding star.
It seems I was wrong. May be it was hard because of bad weather or because I wasn't using any tube shield. However two days ago with a tube shield and clear sky there was plenty of stars with 1 sec exposure to choose from.

And the most thing I love about this MAK that it's so small that it can fit under my VC200L. For me it means that I can still use that nice OTA handle.

I will try to do M42 the next time too. 3 of 9 light frames in the last stack were taken with solid clouds covering M42 least 40% of these frames exposures. I guess it will look much better if it's perfectly centered and taken without any clouds :-)

cheers,

Mike

[Jen]

:thumbsup: nice pic and nice scope too :thumbsup:

[atalas]

Nice shot Mike...just a bit harsh in the highlights.