New look, new setup...

I know, I know! It's been a while. Too many other things happening in life and I got a little busy and distracted ;) Anyways, now I am back, once again, and have a completely new setup!! You might remember that initially I used to use the following:
1) Atlas EQ-G Go-to mount controlled via EQDIR and EQMOD
2) Orion XT-10 telescope tube with Feathertouch focuser and Robofocus
3) Starlight Xpress MX7C single shot color for both imaging and guiding (in interlaced mode)

I upgraded a bit :) The mount is the same, but the rest changed:
1) Celestron C8 with Hyperstar modification, Feathertouch Micro SCT focuser and Robofocus
2) Hyperstar
3) QHY8
4) Guiding with Orion Short Tube 80 and Orion Starshoot Autoguider


I will upload some setup pictures soon. I feel that I have a much cleaner setup at this point (even though it's more components). All the cables are neatly tied up etc. As far as software goes, only one additionl piece of software: PHD Guiding. But of course the laptop setup is completely new. The old one blew up, and I don't have a windows machine anymore. So now I am running everything on a copy of Windows running inside Parallels on my Mac Book Pro. It works just fine! In fact in some ways it's better!

Initially I had some problems getting the QHY8 to work. I kept thinking I could not focus, but turns out the QHY8 was not capturing at all. After some emails and web searches, I figured out that the 4-pin DIN (S-Video) connector supplying power to the camera electronics and CCD was not seating in properly (QHY8 has to power supply cables coming from the adapter to the camera. One for the cooler and the other supplying power to the camera electronics and CCD). After some cable swapping and jacket-trimming (Shaved the plastic jacket on the power cable and now it seats properly), it started capturing. Set it up that night but took some time, reestablishing parameters for robofocus, Maxim DL etc. The data I acquired was too noisy and I didn't have flats. So abandoned them. The next night I set it up again and images a few other targets:



M33. Leaves much to be desired in many areas. 52x30s. Flats, Bias and Dark were used but flats were not too good. Also after calibration I used the "Auto Flatten Background" Filter in Maxim DL and it messed it up a little more...



This is the Pleiades star cluster. Also called the seven sisters. The cool thing about this is that the solar winds are blowing back the gases and you can actually see the ripples in the gases around these stars!! Really cool...The image was 49x30s. Flats, Bias and Dark were used but flats were not too good.

The processing is a little hasty and also I need a better mechanism to take flats. With the big chip and the fast system, there is some severe vignetting. I might even benefit with a Light Pollution filter in the optical train. The next time I image, I need to have better flats. Hopefully I will get some more time this week.