[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Very nice Mike. Good to see the 20 inch pumping out the goods. A few dark rings from Decon around some stars. You can do a few versions with decon and then blend them with one without allowing the non decon stars to show through. Stars can be rounded slightly in Photoshop or StarTools. Greg.

Thanks, Greg. I write all my own image processing software. The decon does a trade-off between some residual panda eyes and better dust lanes. I have a "mask and blend" similar to what you suggest, to reduce the panda eyes, but it's not quite there yet.

Originally Posted by Bassnut

The slightly out of round stars are no big deal, ... easy to fix, fixed here.

Thanks Fred. That's a good after-the-event fix. The elongation is east-west. I've noticed that if I release the polar axis clutch, the bearings feel alarmingly stiff. I've written to Mathis Instruments asking what to do next, but it's Christmas and no answer yet. I suspect that the very stiff polar axis is messing up the tracking.