Great weather for Saturday at Ilford. Blazingly bright Milkyway, dry, clear and no wind. I drove 250km to realise I had forgotten my Gemini box so epic fail. I still had some fun Sunday night at home with the new scope and managed to get a couple of hours in Ha. Bit of 'come down' therapy...
So this one is the uncropped field of the GSO8". I have the MPCC spacing right now. On axis is nice. The scope is very fast but hard to focus and the slightest focus shift will show instantly on the field curvature so my next step is to get some kind of automated focus with temperature compensation. Something else to read on and learn.
Collimation seems to be holding fine in various part of the sky and no apparent tilt although I need to cut the secondary holder a bit shorter to offset it enough so I can center it under the draw tube.
This is 10x10min on M16. Guiding was very good. Transparency so so.
There's a big one
here on my gallery. The field is approx. 1.3x1 degrees and the image scale is 1.4asp.
Thanks for looking.
PS: added 1:1 with warts and all
here. [4.6MB]. Little noisy as I kept only the 10 best subs for this stack.
The left of the field is curved because the whole frame is offset to the right. I have run into a mechanical limitation with the secondary holder and need to cut it 10mm so I can center the secondary properly under the focuser towards the front aperture. At the moment it's shifted too far towards the primary.
I had all setup the tent, lappy and leveled the mount when finding out. Lucky I had plenty of wine because I sure felt like throwing something.
