Hi Guys and Gals, sorry for the delay in my response. As I indicated earlier, all the gear I am using is second hand stuff with the exception of my AP-900 mount. The camera is an early STL-11000 from what I can tell. The subs look really scary, but clean up ok after calibration. I shoot at -15 so I can use the same darks year round or until new hot pixels start to peak out. It struggles to go any further than this in the summer, so -15 is my target all year round. Filters are installed in the internal 5 filter wheel. I have R, G, B, Lum and Ha in there. I was using the on board “Self Guiding” chip. In this image, I was guiding on a 9.2 mag star using 10 second exposures using the built in internal guide chip through the Ha filter. Man, that Ha filter really cuts the light down for guiding purposes. With good alignment, the 10 second exposures on the internal guide chip doesn’t seem to bother the tracking with the current mount. PEC is turned off on the mount. The scope is a 10 inch RCOS with a focal length of f9. I love the build quality, very strong. Focus seems very repeatable and stable with initial testing. In fact, I didn’t refocus at all with the M16 shot. In all the excitement – I forgot and didn’t realise until later. Typically, I used to refocus every 1 degree of temperature change. And, it’s still very scary to move around. It's the largest aperture I am prepared to move around and take to dark sky sites. The rest is pretty generic stuff really. I’d like to thank everyone for your kind replies and comments about the image. I couldn’t find a cloud removal mechanism anywhere. But if anyone knows of an eight position filter wheel for an STL-11000, I am very interested
.
Terry