not a big effort for first light, just taking a few test shots and getting used to the routine again, thin cloud cut my efforts short though..
on the good side looks like i might get away with not having to get the reducer in a hurry.
i only kept a single 5 min sub of 47 tuc and thought i might aswell post it here. no flats or darks.
thanks RB, i need a few more bits yet before i can get too serious with it :p
i just wanted to see what i was up against but so far it looks pretty good.
i dont have a side by side plate yet so i made one up out of a bit of timber and a few dovetails today, not really ideal but it seems to work ok
i found another couple subs that werent ruined by the clouds so i did a 3x5 min version, just a rough process but its enough to learn that the field is flat without the reducer and vignetting should be gone when i take flats
Looks good, as one would expect from these scopes. I used a Baader MPCC with mine as well, cleaned up any wayward coma in the extreme corners. No reduction as well, which is good if you want to stay at 800mm.
Gary
Yep looks pretty sharp, can see a little coma coming in which would be noticable on a 35mm chip but you are probably right that you don't really need the reducer? The reducer will most likely increase the star sizes on/near axis but improve them off axis so the other option is to not use the reducer for smaller objects, then crop, for higher resolution?
i hope so Mike,
i really didnt want to use the reducer unless i really had to besides the single frames look fairly flat, at full size i can see that the stars at the very edges of the frames are starting to get a little eggy but i can probably get away with reducing the image size or just cropping it out since its only the very edges.
Gary, the MPCC sounds interesting too i'll have to try that.
i had heard of people using it with refractors before but couldnt find any images taken with one used.
just ordered a portable pier and side by side plate so i can get everything solid and balanced 100% for a real test.
