Been a while since I've had everything working the way I wanted. I haven't imaged in months.
I've spent the absence of time by acquiring a QSI583WSG and Lodestar guider. Cleaning the Vixen mirror. Collimating optics. Tuning the G11, and working out my checklists to ensure my setup is ready for a night to get some data.
Finally had a great clear night last night. temp stayed stable, seeing was acceptable and wind stayed at bay.
G11 was balanced, cables arranged, polar alignment checked(love alignmaster), and guiding was running exceptional.
The Vixen is very picky about collimation. Ive collimated the best I could and I was amazed that with good polar alignment and mount tuning at how well the guiding was and finally I was seeing round stars with 10min exposures. No tails or elongation in sight. Happy chappy!
I did experience one issue 8000sec into guiding where the lodestar would suddenly stop dead in its tracks. With MaximDL the guiding just froze! The camera didnt appear to freeze, but the guider images and graph suddenly froze which left the mount to start drifting. A quick guider stop, recalibrate and track again fixed the problem. Weird.
I have no idea why it happened and cant find any information on the interwebs about it as yet. Anyone seen this happen?
Was mostly a night of capturing L data and not enough RGB, so Ive tried to carefully pop some color out.
No calibration (must get a lightbox made! )
LRGB 160:15:15:15
I definitely think M83 will need at least 300:120:120:120 or similar to really shine.
Really looking forward to getting the most out of this scope now, and get some good data this year.
Jpeg doesnt do justice :/
http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/t...ro_50scale.jpg
subtle
http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/t...Reject_RGB.jpg
F/9 really blows the stars up :/