Thank you for sharing your photos - this is exactly what this project is all about! :-)
First light with the new camera! Happy upcoming holidays to everyone!
P.S.: During the shoot, there was strong wind, which caused most of the frames to be discarded. The L channel is complete.
Thanks! Regarding the diffraction spikes: I spent the whole evening working on them today. As I understand it, the new spider CYCK turned out to be glossy, which caused it to reflect a lot of stray light (so I was told), so I painted it with matte black paint along with the back of the secondary mirror. But to do that, I had to remove it, which means the collimation was thrown off, and I just recently learned about CollimationCircles. I took a planetary camera, attached a 1.25" fisheye lens to it, plugged it into the focuser, and got to work. I discovered that the secondary mirror doesn't go deep enough into the tube, causing the image of the primary mirror to be cropped by its edge, and on the other side, a piece of the tube is visible. I had suspected this before but couldn't prove it, and now it's more serious. I'll deal with this tomorrow :)
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Yes, collimation is quite an engaging activity :) Good luck and patience to you! On my own 200PDS, I also replaced the spider with a solid one and installed a primary mirror mask.
Comments
A great New Year's gift :) The image is also great, but the diffraction spikes seem quite strong.
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