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First night out with the 1100-AE

Ken Sablinsky
 

Hi all,

I wanted to share how my first night out with my new 1100-AE went.  I meant to just do this as a test to see how well the tracking performed, but it was working so well I let it go for about 5 hours of exposure.  113x 180 second shots of the Spider Nebula and surrounding field with the Stowaway and an IMX410 color camera.

https://www.astrobin.com/542tg4/

I had attached my guide scope to try a guided run, but silly me didn't realize how unnecessary that ended up being.  Aligned with RAPAS (not even calibrated yet), then a quick 50 point dec arc model was all that was needed.  Only had to throw away a few frames and that was only because of passing clouds.  Every frame had identically round stars. I can't believe how well this mount works.

-Ken
Stuart
 

Wow!! Nice test shot! Great that your 1100-AE worked so well!


On Sun, 27 Nov 2022 at 17:08, Ken Sablinsky <kensablinsky@...> wrote:
Hi all,

I wanted to share how my first night out with my new 1100-AE went.  I meant to just do this as a test to see how well the tracking performed, but it was working so well I let it go for about 5 hours of exposure.  113x 180 second shots of the Spider Nebula and surrounding field with the Stowaway and an IMX410 color camera.

https://www.astrobin.com/542tg4/

I had attached my guide scope to try a guided run, but silly me didn't realize how unnecessary that ended up being.  Aligned with RAPAS (not even calibrated yet), then a quick 50 point dec arc model was all that was needed.  Only had to throw away a few frames and that was only because of passing clouds.  Every frame had identically round stars. I can't believe how well this mount works.

-Ken

Ken Sablinsky
 

Thanks Stuart!  I've decided to try for a mosaic since there are so many interesting objects just outside that field of view.  But I'm also itching to swap out for the mono cam and try longer narrowband shots which should be a breeze since I don't have the guide.

-Ken

On Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 2:13 PM Stuart <stuart.j.heggie@...> wrote:
Wow!! Nice test shot! Great that your 1100-AE worked so well!


On Sun, 27 Nov 2022 at 17:08, Ken Sablinsky <kensablinsky@...> wrote:
Hi all,

I wanted to share how my first night out with my new 1100-AE went.  I meant to just do this as a test to see how well the tracking performed, but it was working so well I let it go for about 5 hours of exposure.  113x 180 second shots of the Spider Nebula and surrounding field with the Stowaway and an IMX410 color camera.

https://www.astrobin.com/542tg4/

I had attached my guide scope to try a guided run, but silly me didn't realize how unnecessary that ended up being.  Aligned with RAPAS (not even calibrated yet), then a quick 50 point dec arc model was all that was needed.  Only had to throw away a few frames and that was only because of passing clouds.  Every frame had identically round stars. I can't believe how well this mount works.

-Ken

Karen Christen
 

Hye that’s a pretty terrific result, Ken!  Congrats on the new 1100 – it looks like you’re having fun with it!

Karen

AP

 

From: main@ap-gto.groups.io <main@ap-gto.groups.io> On Behalf Of Ken Sablinsky
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2022 4:08 PM
To: main@ap-gto.groups.io
Subject: [ap-gto] First night out with the 1100-AE

 

Hi all,

I wanted to share how my first night out with my new 1100-AE went.  I meant to just do this as a test to see how well the tracking performed, but it was working so well I let it go for about 5 hours of exposure.  113x 180 second shots of the Spider Nebula and surrounding field with the Stowaway and an IMX410 color camera.

https://www.astrobin.com/542tg4/

I had attached my guide scope to try a guided run, but silly me didn't realize how unnecessary that ended up being.  Aligned with RAPAS (not even calibrated yet), then a quick 50 point dec arc model was all that was needed.  Only had to throw away a few frames and that was only because of passing clouds.  Every frame had identically round stars. I can't believe how well this mount works.

-Ken


--
Karen Christen
Astro-Physics
Howard Hedlund
 

That's what we like: Plug and Play.  Set it up and forget about it, because it just works.
Ken Sablinsky
 

Thanks Karen!  And Howard, agree 100% with the plug and play nature of these mounts. I live in a foggy coastal town and bits of fog and low clouds drifting through the image is a never-ending battle. The guidestar would always get lost, triggering an abort or at least a long delay while I reacquired and started the sequence up again.  Now, the mount happily tracks through the fog no problem.  It's weird getting used to not having to listen for the dreaded "guidestar lost" chime! 

-Ken

On Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 8:53 AM Howard Hedlund <howard@...> wrote:
That's what we like: Plug and Play.  Set it up and forget about it, because it just works.

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