Thursday, March 10, 2011

More hurdles

The Orion Reducer-Corrector for ED80 scopes doesn't have normal T-Threads.  They are 48mm vs 42mm.  The QHY-9 won't mate up with it.  The options were to hunt down an adapter, or return it and go another avenue.  Given the poor treatment I got from the Orion tech support on this issue, and on the thought that more parts tends to lead to more problems (possible flexure in this case) I decided to return it.

So after doing some research the William Optics .8x focal reducer/field flattener III seems to be the way to go.  Unfortunately I have to wait until close to the next New Moon cycle to shoot again.  Won't have the old one refunded and the new one procured and delivered for at least two weeks at best.

Despite dealing with the coma, long exposure times, and having to seriously crop my images for the moment, it didn't stop me from tinkering.  Here's a small 12 sub-exposure stack of the Rosette Nebula, no flats applied, just darks.  Still working out issues with Flats on the new camera.

Acquisition and pre-processing done by yours truly.  Post processing magic applied graciously by Sal Grasso.  He has a knack for working with poor data to produce a decent or even an amazing image.  Considering this short integration time, I thought it came out quite well.

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