Decided I really should start jumping into the longer focal length imaging and later last week I got some adapters to allow me to attach a camera to my older Mewlon 250 with CRS installed.
Collimation so far is what I could do with a Tak Collimation Scope a few months back on my kitchen table. I had hoped on checking the collimation a bit last night but the seeing wasn't crash hot.
It's showing some lateral chromatic aberration, not sure if that's a consequence of the CRS, the ZWO UV/IR filter OR imaging at 45-50º above the horizon on a not great night.
As I haven't taken any calibration frames I did attempt to create some synthetic flats but they didn't turn out so well. Helped remove a few of the numerous dust donuts but the corners weren't great so I've just cropped them out. Stars are very good out to the corners but I think I need to square the sensor off a bit more.
Higher Res Astrobin Link
I'm thinking I need to play with the settings in my mount software in the future. When creating the pointing models it was really struggling at times to plate solve the images. It doesn't help imaging in skies so bright that most of the stars in a 10s exposure are barely detected (unless reasonably bright). There were a number of 10s exposures that didn't appear to show a single star!
It was a learning experience and one that has me contemplating adding an OAG into the mix. Imaging unguided at 0.4"/pixel with a 20kg telescope definitely isn't as easy as imaging at 1.16"pixel with a 10kg one
EDIT: Oh and that weird mottling towards the top of the frame... That's some frost on the sensor that dissipated after the first 40 minutes or so. Cooled the camera to -15ºC a little too fast with the high air humidity.
