[RyanJones]

Hi all,

The plan tonight was to start a new project but, despite the reports saying it would be clear all night, the high cloud rolled in as I was finishing my PA.

I have spent countless hours refining my 8” f/4 setup over recent times so I thought I’d take the opportunity in the small breaks in the cloud to point to Acrux and see what differences my work has made. During focus I achieved a FWHM about 0.8 better than I have ever been able to. This despite the reports saying the seeing was an 8. Very good but not a 10.

Collimation is 1000% easier and more reliable now since modifying my mirror cell. It really just needs a very minor tweak once setup. I can skew from side to side and up and down with no visible change. I have no doubt an auto collimator will prove me wrong but at this stage my laser is happy.

The image here is a single screen shot of my ASIair preview. I can still see the mirror clips because I haven’t made my mirror mask yet but overall it is significantly better than before.

The moon is back now so I’ll be refining further for the next 10 days or so. I’m pretty happy with the progress though.

Thanks for looking

Ryan