After initial success with my new C14 Edge, I ran into all kinds of problems the second time out. I wanted to shoot the Bubble nebula, which was in a perfect section of sky from my location. The bubble has fairly low surface brightness so I wanted to shoot 5-6 minute subs. My ONAG is down but I've had very good success with my old C14 doing up to 8 minute subs with my guide-scope. But heck, I couldn't get anything to work once I went past 3 minutes with the new scope! Something is shifting. I had taken my old scope apart many times to tighten absolutely everything and the only thing left was the slider on the baffle tube. It was actually pretty stable and I regularly went 4-8 minutes with only occasional problems.
I couldn't deal with it in the dark and time was wasting, so I went for the Bubble using 3-minute subs and I got 50 acceptable images. (Last night I went for 20 at 6 minutes on M33 and got 3 well-guided images--and the seeing was so bad that I even had to throw those out too.) Anyway, this image of the Bubble was pulled out the very low end of the data so it's not nearly as clean as I would have liked. The sky transparency and the seeing were "poor" which also seriously hampered my efforts, but here in Oregon, I've learned to take what I can get. I'm still having some issues with strays and my flats aren't 100 % right at the low end either. I have an EL panel on order that will hopefully resolve that problem once and for all. Next step is to carefully go over the new scope to see if I can find anything that might be causing the problem. [NOTE: Yes, I know that ONAG will completely solve this problem and that's direction I'm headed. I any case, I want the system to be way more stable than this regardless of how I guide.]
Exposure: 50 x 3 minutes at ISO 1600
Camera: Hutech modified Canon 6D
Flats: 30, Bias: 32, Darks: 35
Scope: C14 Edge
Mount: AP1600
Guidescope: Vixen 95 mm w/NexGuide
Processing: PI & PS
Note: This is cropped about 70% from the original full frame.
John
