Newt/ Tarantula Ha

[richardo (Rich)]

Hi all,
have been waiting for skies and conditions to improve. Been pretty poor and when
there was no clouds on a couple of nights, crap seeing, used them to work on
some issues to improve my new setup.
One thing I noticed and have been disappointed with, was my choice to go
with the compression ring option on my Moonlite focuser. It never really did
a positive fit with my MPCC corrector, seemingly always to make it sit skew
in the draw tube when tightened. Luckily, well not really, I bumped the tension screw while.....
puting my scope back on the mount. The thread was then stripped within the tube and basically
it was no good. I returned the original focusing tube back in and the fit with the MPCC
was very positive as it should be.
Go figure, I thought the compression option would have been far superior to a standard single screw job.

I put in a roughly made spacer to give me the correct 55mm from
the corrector to the ccd plane rather than just guess as I've done in the last 2 outings
but it was a rush job last night and is causing distortion to the R/H side.. am making one
on a friends lath tomorrow which should sort this out.
I still have to get better polar alignment, and also my collimation is still out, but have
a Jim Fly autocollimator coming that will sort my issues out.

Hopefully have these little teething
probs sorted for this non moon time approaching.

Really happy with the detail this scope picks up super fast.
Here's a Ha image of the Tarantula I took while the sky was clear last night..
L/H thumb on front page......
http://www.baytop-observatory.com/

Thanks for taking a peak..

Cheers
Rich

[jase (Jason)]

Hey Rich,
I think your Ha NGC 2070 is great. Very nice detail. Your scope seems to be performing well.

Cheers

[Dennis]

Very nice image Rich, looks stunning in H alpha.

Cheers

Dennis

[Striker (Tony)]

Nice image Rich,

Plenty of detail for 1 minute exposures

[Ric]

Morning Rich,
That is one stunning image in Ha, very clear and detailed.
You can really get the feeling of depth with it as well.
Great imaging.

cheers

[atalas]

Nice shot Rich.

[2020BC (Bill Christie)]

Superb

[Octane (Humayun)]

Rich,

That looks absolutely wonderful.

Can't wait to try that for myself one day!

Regards,
Humayun

[richardo (Rich)]

Thank you Jase, Dennis, Tony, Ric, Louie, Bill and Humayan... for your very nice comments.
I'm very pleased with the short amount of time it takes to gather data and the quality that comes back is great, provided the weather conditions are ok.
I'm very happy with the way things have turned out with this scope.
Alos these bright objects are great to keep me encouraged while I get things fine tuned for the deeper stuff.... well when the weather permits at least... hasn't been anything great for a while. Fingers crossed for this next dark period.

Cheers all and thanks again.

Rich