Slowly coming to terms with the new scope. I tried collimating it last night, but only succeeded in making it worse, now fixed in daylight thanks to the Tak collimating scope, still need to star test though.
I've also been having trouble with the guiding, last night was more to do with the seeing being rubbish, but I keep getting drift when I guide, so that the AO unit runs out of adjustment and has to bump the mount. This is obviously a polar alignment issue. I have the G11 on a very fine pier made by a local guru, so the pier is fine, but it was made for my Meade fork mount, so was a little low for the G11, so I made an adapter...out of PVC pipe. Don't laugh, it's been working pretty well up until now. I decided that this must be flexing under the load when the scope shifts, so as to stuff up the polar alignment.
A trip or two to Bunnings and now I have removed the PVC and have post supports under the tripod top section, attached to the top of the pier. Solid as a rock now, just have to drift align again and I'll see if I've solved that one.
Anyway, bereft of clear nights down here, so even though the seeing was very poor here last night, I spent a fair bit of it imaging. Here's a pretty average M20 as a result, it has collimation errors, guiding errors, light pollution and probably a myriad of other problems, but it's an image, so I'll post it anyway.
LRGB image, 60, 30, 30, 30 mins, all unbinned (the stars were blooming too quickly).
I feel your pain Stuart. It has been so cloudy here I have not imaged at Clayton for months or so it seems. I think you need a steel extention for sure. Overall I like the image but can see some colour noise in the blue areas. More subs would make it impressive and like you said now with better collimation the data will be nice and sharp. Take what you can when you can, it might be like this for some time yet.
Nice deep red,
could benefit from a very very light tough of sharpening?
lovely though as is especially the deep red (i can never quite succeed at getting that lovely deep tone)
frank
That's a really nice image. I have a similar setup, a new RC10C on a G11 and haven't had first light yet :'( so you give me hope I've got a nice 'scope.
That's a really nice image. I have a similar setup, a new RC10C on a G11 and haven't had first light yet :'( so you give me hope I've got a nice 'scope.
Charles
Hi Charles,
Yes, they are a nice scope. The G11 works pretty well with it as the OTA isn't that heavy. Get a Tak collimation scope. I put a wanted ad on Astromart and a few weeks later had one. If you want to borrow one in the meantime I can probably send mine over, once you've used one though you'll want one.
The PVC worked OK and was double layered (i.e. I cut a slit out of another piece of PVC and stuck the two bit together), but the post supports work better, no flex whatsoever.
If it was me and i just spent that kinda rods on a really high end scope i would be going and getting a Pier extension made... a lot better and cleaner!
...but at least you have an observatory 
...PVC pier huh 
