Andromeda

Here's one from last week with the newly refigured 10". I must say that my mount is not equipped to handle the 10" and I cobbled together some rings out of scrap wood. Add to that the lack of sufficient counterweights and I'm very pleased with this image! I didn't dare add a guide scope to the already overloaded CG5 mount so I used a Soligor 135mm f/3.5 lens w/Basler A102f mono Firewire camera. I had trouble finding enough weights to balance things out. I'm not sure if it was the lens type or the lack of balance but I didn't have much luck getting metaguide calibrated or working well. Guiding was pretty off and my stars got stretched. Here's andromeda @ ISO 1600 180s exposures... 23 of them but only stacked about 10. Processing is actually pretty bad now that I look at it. My 2-year old was getting into things so I rushed.

Photos of my rig will follow.

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Note the use of the wife's 3lb hand weights and the flywheel of a small engine to try and add enough weight. ;-) I had previously knocked the teeth out of the flywheel (purposefully) since it sometimes sits at the back of the OTA to balance out my Televue 9mm when the 10" is used as a dob.

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