First test of Orion 6" Astrograph - M42
Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 7:44 am
After a couple nights of trying to learn collimation in the living room, I then tested balance with the camera and guidescope, and took it all outside to test guiding and coma correction wit the MPCC. 
Caveat - I have nothing dialed in yet. Still getting my feels for collimation, and no adjustment to backspacing of the coma corrector so it's just threaded on in factory position. Other than some wind gusts and occasional slow dither settle down, despite the wonky multi-axis balance issues the guiding went surprisingly well.
Subs had to be short - not only does this thing collect light pretty fast, but this was Sunday night so the moon was very close to Orion and pretty much shining right down the tube. I tried 30 second subs at iso100 for 30 minutes. Tossed several due to the wind, ended up with 26 minutes.
The gradients and weird reflections from the moon were pretty gnarly, so I had to crop off one side pretty hard. Still, as a first try of so many new things, I'm pleased with it. Better than my tries at M42 last year with the refractor, which were also of limited integration and also before I fixed my lens cell.
Also my first time taking M42 using the f/s D5300 (with UV-IR cut), so the color balance was a bit difficult as full field or star sampling didn't seem to be spot on and reds were strong.
Plenty of flaws, and much to learn still, but it was a lot of fun playing with new toys.
Caveat - I have nothing dialed in yet. Still getting my feels for collimation, and no adjustment to backspacing of the coma corrector so it's just threaded on in factory position. Other than some wind gusts and occasional slow dither settle down, despite the wonky multi-axis balance issues the guiding went surprisingly well.
Subs had to be short - not only does this thing collect light pretty fast, but this was Sunday night so the moon was very close to Orion and pretty much shining right down the tube. I tried 30 second subs at iso100 for 30 minutes. Tossed several due to the wind, ended up with 26 minutes.
The gradients and weird reflections from the moon were pretty gnarly, so I had to crop off one side pretty hard. Still, as a first try of so many new things, I'm pleased with it. Better than my tries at M42 last year with the refractor, which were also of limited integration and also before I fixed my lens cell.
Also my first time taking M42 using the f/s D5300 (with UV-IR cut), so the color balance was a bit difficult as full field or star sampling didn't seem to be spot on and reds were strong.
Plenty of flaws, and much to learn still, but it was a lot of fun playing with new toys.
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- M42 26pt5m O6 ST8 3A.jpg (414.74 KiB) Viewed 2393 times
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