RC 10 First Light (Finally!)

[E_ri_k (Erik)]

Hey guys. After having the RC10 just sitting around in the obs for over a month due to bad weather and guiding issues just to name a few, last nights conditions were great.

I managed to get the the new guiding hardware working, and it behaved quite well, letting get 5 x 15 minute subs of NGC 253, before heading in. I think the focus is a slight bit off, it looks a bit soft? But I'm mainly working on the guiding for now. It's quite rough and noisy, but I think it looks promising for things to come

Erik

[AstroJason (Jason)]

Great first light images Erik, is your scope one of the GSO RCs?

[RickS (Rick)]

Great stuff! Looks like it's all working well now, Erik.

[whzzz28 (Nathan)]

Looking great. Focus doesnt appear to be too soft from my eyes. Maybe some slight elongation of the smaller stars.

Much much better than my first light with the Vixen VC200L over the weekend.
Same target - my collimation is off. Focus was off, or collimation was giving me fuzy results.
And to top it off guiding was terrible. 20min subs were working OK for the first 2hrs then i started getting star trails. Went back to 10min subs and it was alright.
Then i failed with flat frames, so the resulting data is basically useless.

Yeah, wasted the new moon weekend

Might have to see if i can find someone i can bribe with a slab to collimate my scope for me

Good luck with the RC10!

[gregbradley]

Yes it is quite soft. Either your collimation is off, focus was not sharp or seeing was bad. Or a combo of the above. There is slight elongation of your stars but not too much so tracking wasn't too bad.

RCs are sensitive to the spacing between primary and secondary mirrors.
I don't know if that is relevant in your case but if other things fail it may be worthwhile to check the spacing.

What was the camera?If its KAF8300 chip you can expect it to produce soft images at that focal length.

Greg.

[E_ri_k (Erik)]

Originally Posted by AstroJason

Great first light images Erik, is your scope one of the GSO RCs?

Yeah it a GSO scope. Really happy with it so far

Originally Posted by RickS

Great stuff! Looks like it's all working well now, Erik.

Thanks Rick, slowly getting there, and working things out!

Originally Posted by whzzz28

Yeah, wasted the new moon weekend

I know how you feel.....Thanks!

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Yes it is quite soft. Either your collimation is off, focus was not sharp or seeing was bad. Or a combo of the above. There is slight elongation of your stars but not too much so tracking wasn't too bad.

RCs are sensitive to the spacing between primary and secondary mirrors.
I don't know if that is relevant in your case but if other things fail it may be worthwhile to check the spacing.

What was the camera?If its KAF8300 chip you can expect it to produce soft images at that focal length.

Greg.

Using a QHY 10, Greg. I noticed the stars are a bit oval, had a few hick-ups towards the end, but not too bad. Want to try break the 20min sub barrier...
Thanks for the positive feedback
Erik

[David Fitz-Henr]

Nice first light images Erik! Just some slight elongation of the stars, but then you can't expect perfection on the first night! After all, getting to the bottom of these issues and thus getting more and more familiar with your scope is half the fun ...

[E_ri_k (Erik)]

Thanks David. Don't know about fun haha There were a few times I felt like giving up, but got there in the end. Now just need some more clear nights!
Erik

[Paul Haese]

A little soft on the subs I think. I found with the RC's you need to check focus fairly often. Usually every 2-3 subs you will need to go back to the focus star and ensure focus is sharp. I am at present using a Bahtinov mask to focus. When using that I magnify the images to 200% and get the focus as close as I can to perfect.

Other things you might want to check is collimation with the camera in the telescope. Place a star in the center of the image and defocus that. If you have good collimation it should present as concentric circles. Al's collimation aid will help.

That said, you have made a good start and I look forward to more of your images.

[E_ri_k (Erik)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

That said, you have made a good start and I look forward to more of your images.

Thanks for the encouragement Paul I am also using a Bahtinov mask and zooming in. Had perfect focus I thought. Al's collimation aid is really good, I used that. The collimation so out ever so slightly, I need to work on that.

Trying to get the guiding tamed at the moment also.....

I'm going to give this one another crack when the storm passes....
Erik

[E_ri_k (Erik)]

So the TAK collimation scope arrived yesterday. I knew the collimation was slightly out, but when I attached TAK scope it showed the secondary was off by a fair bit. All aligned now, so hopefully, this will make a difference.
Erik

[Leonardo70 (Leonardo Orazi)]

Congrats for the firts light ... nice telescope :-)

All the best,
Leo

[Ross G]

A very good photo Erik.

What a great start.

Good luck.

Ross.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Good result!