Finally got autoguiding cracked...

Michael - apart from the barely perceptible star elongations, that image is spot on. I like the colour and it looks very natural overall - there's no hint of any overprocessing.

Having imaged M42 on one or two occasions I like the way you've kept the inner stars visible whilst not grossly overexposing the core. Tha's a nice touch.

Well done - you're certainly reaping the benefits of all your new kit and the obsevatory.

Dave

Thanks Dave.
As for the the v. slight star elongations - you're right. However, I was very surprised that the autoguiding was so successfull. This was literally my first proper attempt at autoguiding. I has only figured out about 10mins beforehand how to get the autoguiding working. As I was working on the mount earlier in the day, the mount wasn't ever properly polar aligned and the gotos were completely way off. I was extremely surprised that the autoguiding was more or less able to keep up with the tracking errors. I only took the one long exposure of M42 as I thought the autoguiding would fail miserably as a result and that the image would be completly rubbish!

I think those star elongations would only be noticed by experienced imagers. Pity the competition is not Nebulae - this would be a winner! And if that was your first attempt at guiding and polar alignment was skewiff, God help us

As a marginally related subject, here's a test image with the AP1200 at FL of 1540mm (image scale is about 10 * 12 arcmins). Exposure time is 628 second (one complete worm revolution) taken on Saturday night - NO GUIDING!





Now, if I can this damned mount sorted out properly, I'd aim to be getting somehere like 20 to 30 minutes unguided exposures. Imagine what it would be like with guiding...

Cheers

Dave

<jaw drop>

That's incredible accuracy Dave!

the proseesing is verry good, the colors are great. The stars are maybe a tiny bit blurred out.

Dave Mc D, you get what you pay for, if I payed many many thousands for the mount alone, it would wanna be good. :lol:

Michael,
Its a grand image Michael, the colour is pretty good in my estimation, if not a tad too blue?? I would have brought out the red abit more maybe..
There is a slight tracking error which you could get over and probabily solve with abit of time, a very quick estimation of between 1 and 3 arcseconds....
I'm trying to decide is the focus a tiny bit soft?, there appears to be no coma near the edges of the image, making the camera+scope a very good combination.
I'm tempted to get that mak lens myself looking at that image quality, no chromatic abberation, curved field or coma visible there at all!

Dave - point taken and of course, you're dead right!

There does seem to be a glitch in the mount but I'm not sure what the cause is. During the 628 sec cycle, the RA jumps east to west and back about 1 to 2 arcmins over a time period of about 2 seconds. I'm not sure if its a poorly programmed PEC curve or a mechanical issue. I'm going to try and characterise it over the next few weeks and see if its still there. If so, I'll have to call AP... The blurred stars in the image above are in fact a double image - that couple of seconds worth of 'jump'.

Dave