Observation by Len Adam: First Light with new camera and filter w...

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Len Adam

Observer

Len Adam

Observed

2019 Feb 06 - 10:22

Uploaded

2019 Feb 06 - 10:22

Objects

Observatory
Equipment

Equipment
  • iPhone
Location

Albox Almeria Spain

Target name

New Equipment

Title

First Light with new camera and filter wheel.

About this image

The image shows my Paramount MyT with my 8-inch RC telescope which has a new ZWO 1600 mono camera and 7 position filter wheel. 

I have now mounted three telescopes side by side using a Primaluce Lab side by side bar. There are no trailing wires - the MyT makes it very easy to thread wires through the mount. I have added an Icron system that converts USB at my MacBook Air in the house to Ethernet via a 50m CAT 6 cable that goes through a hole in the wall to the observatory and then threads through the mount and provides 4 USB sockets on the Icron remote box which is 'velcroed' to the Primaluce bar meaning that the cameras can use these ports. This is in addition to the 2 USB ports on the MyT already -  giving 6 in total at the telescope end of things! I previously used a 50m powered USB cable (that I still use to drive the MyT) but camera connection was intermittent. Having read the Bisque brothers recommendation on Icron I went for that system. It works solidly - no issues at all. So I now have the 8 - inch RC plus ZWO 1600 mono camera and filter wheel, my old ETX 90 OTA with my unmodified Canon 40D and a ZWO 120 colour camera on my 80mm guide scope. All power requirements for the 'up top ' equipment are fed through the mount as well. To align the ETX and the Skywatcher I have mounted them both on Skywatcher Guidescope Mounts so once the 8 inch is set up I can adjust the other scopes in Altitude and Azimuth to match the 8 inch. (I have not started to set up the other cameras yet but have tested them.) I finally took my first series of images of IC410 on Monday night with the final result shown in the adjacent image. Before starting to image for real I used T-Point to automatically image 120 points distributed across the sky visible from my observatory and generate a supermodel to automatically adjust for pointing errors on my tripod mounted set up. It will now accurately point to any object visible with a minute or two. However using the brilliant Closed Loop Slew option in SkyX to go to an object will put it dead centre in the cross hairs of the roughly 37' x 28' field of the 8-inch telescope - every time!

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