[bkm2304 (Richard Brown)]

Hello all,

After a long, long wait for the right part I finally hooked the scope up to my eq, found the pole (well close to it!) and started shooting. M42 was the first obvious place to start - although I usually christen my scopes on Alpha centauri which was too low.

Here is the first effort. I took 3 x 30sec images at prime focus of the Petzval with a Nikon 40D. Then stacked them in Registax - but it said the stack was only 2 - so who knows? I am pleased that;

a - I actually captured an image(!)
b - The tracking was pretty Ok

THere is much more to understand about the process, obviously. EG. when I convert my 1mb jpegs to bitmaps so Registax will read them, they blow out to 17mb! Should I collect them as another format from the camera?

Also, how on earth do I get a crisp focus? My camera is on the end of the scope and looking through the view finder renders a very dark field. I'm not sure when focus is best.

As some of you may know it's been a long time since I looked into a refraaa... refraaccc... refraccct... something without a mirror - and it's so SMALL!!!! So please help me if you can!!!