M52 Open Cluster in Cassiopeia, 3rd October 2015, Manche, France

[The Thing]

This is first light on Mick's NEQ6 mount. It worked well first time, no messing about and gave me 0.8arcsec RMS guiding. It's a real bummer he never got the pleasure of using it.

It was a good choice of target given the Moon situation and slight murkiness. I used high pass sharpening for the first time. This image hasn't been cropped for a change, for some reason I am getting good stars right to the edge (OK so they are not Tak sharp...). I can only put this down to very careful collimation as nothing else has changed on my old SCT.

Image date, time and location:   20151003 Manche France
Telescope aperture and focal ratio:   Meade LX90 8", Baader Alan Gee II Telecompressor f5.6
Camera and filters used:   Canon 1000D Modded, no filters
Processing applied:   Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop CS2, Irfanview

[JohnP]

shock horror... Its not the moon.....

Great image dunc & nice 1st light...

BTW that is first light for the mount - It was previously owned by my boss at work - It spent 2 years sitting in the office not being used - in fact I powered it up once to do some visual with it - So glad its being used at last...

John

[Fay]

well done Duncan, glad about the mount.

Fay

[RobertM]

Looks like that mount is working well Duncan.  Give deconvolution a go as well as high pass sharpening, it's certainly more work but can give excellent results.

Robert

[MarkS]

A great first light for that mount!

Mark