I finally not only did I have a bit of time to do some imaging, but actually had some solid success with it. I setup the gear on Friday night and spent about 4 hours polar aligning the mount then I left the mount outside till Monday so I didn’t have to keep realigning it.
Attached are the end results, I spend 3 nights imaging the Eagle Nebula (M16) through the narrowband filters, Ha, SII, OIII and Hb. I used the latest modded canon 40D for it.
Ha: 5 min subs ISO800
SII: 6 min subs at ISO1600 & 4 min subs ISO3200 on night 3
OIII: 5 minute at ISO1600
Hb: 5 minute ISO1600
Total of 10 hours of exposures for all filters and combined in Hubble Palette and reverse Hubble palette into RGB.
During the first two nights I also did some unguided sub exposures on the Sculptor Galaxy when the eagle was getting too low in the horizon, total of 2 hours were usable of 2 minute ISO1600 subs.
I added a comparison picture of the Hubble Pillars of creation. The Hubble is a lot LOT sharper and detailed, but I look at it this way, the Hubble mirror is 2.4 meters, mine is 20 cm... I'm shooting through the atmosphere, where as the hubble is in space and the cost of the hubble was $2.5 Billion, my gear was nowwhere near that... about 150,000 times difference, and eventhough it is better, I don't think the hubble is 150,000 times better....
I was still getting a bit of drift... But on further investigation, I'm starting to think that it was caused by flexture.. More to the point, a loose focuser tube on the refractor....
Definitely room for improvement, and I'm certain that the 8SE is capable of more detail... Especially if I have longer subs at lower gain.
