This is it, well almost the first light. The actual first light was taken before a few mods and bits added. The resulting first image was at best awful. I am a little in fact a lot happier with this image. It is just a quick 9 X 5 minute exposure of eta carina core area.
The original focuser although beefed up from the original focusers was not the best for astrophotography and suffered quite a bit of sag. I replaced it with a 2" Starlight focuser which is a beautiful, well made focuser quite capable of carrying the long imaging train hanging off the back.
The second requirement was a suitable field flattener. I elected to follow Paul Haese and use a Tak TOA35 flattener. The distance between the CCD and the FF is a meager 155mm (Thanks Paul for this info), making the back end quite long. I used 2" Tak 50.8 extender to fill this gap. The stars with this or approx this spacing are reasonably good and I will endeavor to get the spacing a little more accurate before getting a custom adapter made.
The collimation was also quite a bit out. Now a bit closer.
The image was taken using:
Telescope: GSO RC 8"
Camera: QHY8Pro cooled OSC CCD at -20 degrees.
Guided: QHY5 and WO 70MM refractor mounted on top of the RC.
Mount: G11 with Gemini.
Image taken with some high level cloud. Best I could manage.
Very little processing. Just a quick stretch and some shadows and highlights. Processed with IP3 and PS CS3.
The images were calibrated with Flats and Bias files (Something different for me the FSQ doesn't need any). No Darks taken or used.
I had a few unusual coloured pixel streaks which were tracked down to using the high speed download. (Full image in less than 2 seconds ( Not recommended))
Thanks for looking, all I need now is some clear sky.