Galaxy Season!

So this is my first galaxy season and it has not disappointed! I have had a blast. I need to really catch up on sleep cause I have not been getting much. Ready glad I gave my Edge 8hd a second chance. It has become my favorite scope. Still trying to work things out with guiding but it is very usable. If anyone has any tips on a celestron OAG and 290mm-mini, let me know! It has been acceptable but not great.

Other than that, I think its time for me to collimate! I gave it a go last night but I don’t think I got it as accurate as I would have liked and I didn’t want to waste precious time. I ended up buying a Hotech SCA 1.5 inch laser collimator. I will load it into my equipment section with a write up when I get it going and hopefully it will get me some better focus.

I still want to get Bodes and Sunflower but so far, I have some pretty good photos of the galaxies I have shot. All these shots are at 1400mm and f7. Some are better than others but overall, Im super pumped about this rig again and even though it is a monster to set up and take down, it has been well worth it. Here’s what I got. Lemme know whatcha think!

m100 - top left, m88 - top middle, m66 - top right, Caldwell 7 - bottom left, m51 - middle right, m101 - bottom right.

Imaging at 1400mm and F/7

Imaging is not easy. I have learned that over the past year. I have obsessed about it but as much as I do, it doesn’t make it any easier. In one of my earlier blog posts, I explained how I started imaging with hyperstar and an Edge 8hd and how/why I moved to a smaller, more portable rig. I kept my Edge to use it for deep space imaging that a wide field refractor might not pick up the detail on. I had tried it twice with a .7 reducer and OAG to no avail. In fact, the 2nd time I was upset and ready to sell my big mount and scope. I calmed down and told myself I would do a little more research and give it one more try. That try came last night. Here was my set up:

The night started off the same as the others. There are 3 things I needed working. I needed my main camera to focus, I needed my guide camera to focus, and I needed my mount to connect to everything so the my guide camera could make the tracking adjustments it needed to guide. One or more of these items never worked. Finally at about 12:30am, it all came together. My mount connected, I was able to focus my guide camera, and then begin guiding. It was a very rewarding feeling. It was pretty spot on with the exception of some very gusty winds. It yielded this image:

This is M101, the pinwheel galaxy. I have imaged this before but with a smaller refractor. I am very proud of this image and for only 20 sub frames at 300 seconds per image, gusty winds, and a quick pixinsight edit, I think it came out pretty good. I would like to get data totaling up to about 5 hours on this galaxy and see what I can do with it. I had read about how tough it is to image at this focal length and beyond and I will have to agree, it is not nearly as easy as imaging with a small refractor or hyperstar. But I finally got it. I will post a video on my setup and how I was able to get all this working very soon so that anyone else who might have a similar setup to mine can have a little bit of a head start. Tonight I will be shooting m51 so stay tuned!