Got out last night for the conjunction and missed the show due to the only clouds in Oz, conveniently located above my house in Sydney. I remember sitting on the sofa around 10:00pm and looking at pictures on FB from everybody. Albury, QLD, Melbourne, SA ... even Perth. wtf!
By 10:00pm the moon crescent got just under the cloud layer while setting down and that gave me a quick window of opportunity to focus the scope, align the finder and focus the OAG as well. Ha 7nm at prime on a C11 is a fairly tight fov and dark as, so you need something uber bright to find it.
I then slewed to M8 and got the cluster and hour glass in the field. The Lodestar on the OAG focused fine, did its thing and I was away cranking 3min subs with reasonable guiding. Lost a lot of subs due to passing clouds and the guide star disappeared a couple of time. Clouded again quickly at 11:00pm. Shot my flats then. By 1:00am it was clear but so dewy you could see the fog in the sky. Incredible. I needed a mop so I covered everything and went to bed.
Got very little data (15x3min) but the seeing wasn't too shabby. I added the GSO 8" fov to show the C11 fov size.
I have a HD version
here:
All the stuffing around with the C11 primary paid off. It holds collimation and is giving me some nice pics now I have the mirrors spacing and everything down pat. It's as heavy as a dead donkey though. Minor problem for now but as I get older it'll have to be mounted permanently.