strongmanmike
23-04-2011, 11:21 PM
Well...after some fiddling and farting around and the inevitable Murphy's Law weather and life and work etc :rolleyes:...I managed first light last night.
The scope is relatively easy (for me anyway :P) to set up and as seen in the photos below is perfectly balanced in all parts of the sky. The collimation, while time consuming :scared:, is easy to do physically because the OTA is so short and even though I don't feel I have 100% nailed it yet it is pretty close and any residule misscollimation is relatively minor considering the image circle we have here is a wopping 2.6deg across at 1.6"/pix! :eyepop:
I have to say...this appears to be a great scope :thumbsup:
Apart from gusting breezes all night, the seeing was pretty woefull early on in the night for the Omega Cen shot and I was dodging cloud. I went for Cen A later on to test how the system flexed when moved and Cen A was pretty low in the south west so it also suffered in resolution a bit but the last image for the night NGC 6334 Cats Paw the seeing had improved markedly so the session ended on a great note :)
I had to spend a while getting the collimation right (it's still not quite peeeerfect) but once honed in the bloody thing works YAAAAY :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:. The Aurora Flat field Panel was great and I worked out correct exposures for each filter but this took up a bit of time from trial and error.
The skies from Mums place are about as bad as they come for light pollution and add to that a 3/4 moon and poor seeing most of the night the conditions weren't ideal for a fast 12" astrograph with a 2.6deg diaginal field of view!....but I recon the results still speak for themselves.
The power of more apperture and the super fast focal ratio (F3.8) was evident and remarkably these are all amazingly brief exposures, I was just testing so I was using just 2min subs and not many of them :eyepop: The FLI Atlas focuser worked perfectly too and carried and moved the heavy imaging train without a hitch.
The NJP mount didn't miss a beat either even with 34kg of counterweights PLUS the scopes and cameras - beaut mount that!
The following are only TEST shots, proper long exposures with longer subs under a dark and moonless sky will come....
First Light Images (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/first_light_ag12) (select "original" size from the other sizes menu at the very bottom of an image page) capture details are under each image!
and you can see the setup and first light session photos here
Setting up for First Light (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/ag12_testing)
I am so happy (given my history with the ASA scope of similar design some 4 years ago :mad2: and the associated trepidation that caused me on this current venture) and after these results I have decided to become a kind of agent or more like a conduit for Orion Optics imaging OTA's :D... so if you are interested in one of these beasts or even an Orion Optics ODK OTA or optics, drop me a line at m.sidonio@bigpond.com I have negotiated so I can get you a good price too :thumbsup:
Happy Mike :D:D:D
The scope is relatively easy (for me anyway :P) to set up and as seen in the photos below is perfectly balanced in all parts of the sky. The collimation, while time consuming :scared:, is easy to do physically because the OTA is so short and even though I don't feel I have 100% nailed it yet it is pretty close and any residule misscollimation is relatively minor considering the image circle we have here is a wopping 2.6deg across at 1.6"/pix! :eyepop:
I have to say...this appears to be a great scope :thumbsup:
Apart from gusting breezes all night, the seeing was pretty woefull early on in the night for the Omega Cen shot and I was dodging cloud. I went for Cen A later on to test how the system flexed when moved and Cen A was pretty low in the south west so it also suffered in resolution a bit but the last image for the night NGC 6334 Cats Paw the seeing had improved markedly so the session ended on a great note :)
I had to spend a while getting the collimation right (it's still not quite peeeerfect) but once honed in the bloody thing works YAAAAY :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:. The Aurora Flat field Panel was great and I worked out correct exposures for each filter but this took up a bit of time from trial and error.
The skies from Mums place are about as bad as they come for light pollution and add to that a 3/4 moon and poor seeing most of the night the conditions weren't ideal for a fast 12" astrograph with a 2.6deg diaginal field of view!....but I recon the results still speak for themselves.
The power of more apperture and the super fast focal ratio (F3.8) was evident and remarkably these are all amazingly brief exposures, I was just testing so I was using just 2min subs and not many of them :eyepop: The FLI Atlas focuser worked perfectly too and carried and moved the heavy imaging train without a hitch.
The NJP mount didn't miss a beat either even with 34kg of counterweights PLUS the scopes and cameras - beaut mount that!
The following are only TEST shots, proper long exposures with longer subs under a dark and moonless sky will come....
First Light Images (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/first_light_ag12) (select "original" size from the other sizes menu at the very bottom of an image page) capture details are under each image!
and you can see the setup and first light session photos here
Setting up for First Light (http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/ag12_testing)
I am so happy (given my history with the ASA scope of similar design some 4 years ago :mad2: and the associated trepidation that caused me on this current venture) and after these results I have decided to become a kind of agent or more like a conduit for Orion Optics imaging OTA's :D... so if you are interested in one of these beasts or even an Orion Optics ODK OTA or optics, drop me a line at m.sidonio@bigpond.com I have negotiated so I can get you a good price too :thumbsup:
Happy Mike :D:D:D