[DWHealing (Daryl)]

Taking some advice from the team here I decided to 'focus' on one target for a couple of nights. Having an 8" LX200 on a fork mount (no wedge) I didn't think it was worth the effort to spend too long on any one item - I was just having a great time actually finding M16 or for the first time ever the Horse Head just a few weeks ago (woohoo!). I like using the ASI Live stacking tool for instant gratification... but I decided to try a little harder and see how far I could go with imaging on a fork mount.

So I spent some time and sorted some darks, flats and biases. The look on my wife's face when taking photos of a brightly lit wall and stealing her white t-shirt to stick over my telescope - yes I am crazy.

Then finally thinking I should maybe use that ASI Air that I bought. I could never get guiding to work with PHD and the old LX200, she just kept going all over the place during the calibration phase. I was pleasantly surprised when the ASI Air slowly nudged the old fork mount slowly and start guiding. When I say guiding... Ha! it was not good by any means.. but it was a lot of fun.

I am amazed at how good the ZWO 2600 MPC - being on a fork mount and working at f10 - I am pretty much limited to 10 second images. Still the stars are a little bit not so round.

So... with 10 second images.... I'd better take a lot of images... So I managed to collect about 2000 of them. I ran all these through SIRIL and used GIMP to do some little adjustments. Its not perfect by any means but I think it looks pretty great.

I had so much fun! I suppose that is what it is all about.