Patchwork moon with the RC8 & QHY5 cam

I have been dying to try out my new QHY5 guide camera with a bit of planetary and lunar image stacking. I've heard they give great results and I also wanted to put my 8" ritchey chretien to the test. Being a specialised scope for deep sky imaging I wasn't sure how well it would perform. I'm happy to report that it performs quite well. Below the result of two 2sec videos, stacked and stitched (stacked in registax, stitched in Photoshop)

As you can see, some dust on the telescope mirror did show up. Nothing a few flat frames won't fix, though. Next time I'm going for the whole moon!

OTA: 8" Ritchey Chrétien

Camera: QHY5

Mount: HEQ5

Exposures: 2x2sec .avi video

Processing: Registax
Post-processing: Photoshop

DSO 7 - Atik 16IC First Light

I had some fun with my new (second hand) Atic 16IC mono CCD camera, attached to my 8" Ritchey Chretein.

The insert in the image below was taken with the above setup. The 16IC is still an incredibly sensitive camera, despite being a few years old now. I can't recall exactly but the image was taken with an exposure lower than sixty seconds, with one dark frame applied to counteract some hot pixels. 

It's so much fun imaging at this rate. I'm going to plan an imaging Moore Marathon some time.

I owned a Newtonian for Three Days

I purchased a second hand 8" Ritchey Chrétien recently, but when delivery day came, I found that I had been sent one of those amazing, fast imaging Newtonian telescopes by mistake. It has since been sent back and I am now the proud owner of an RC8

However, the first thing I thought when I saw the Newtonian, was photo op! 

I wanted to post some pictures of the 8" Newtonian on my HEQ5 for one reason. When researching astronomy equipment, I quickly realised that there weren't very many images online of the kind of set-up I wanted. If someone is thinking of putting this telescope and this mount together, then perhaps these images might help them in making a decision  During the short time that I had the telescope, I noted that it could be very well balanced on the HEQ5. Though being quite a heavy telescope, the mount could more than handle the it. It also has the usual great build quality from GSO.

Apart from this being a little informative, what amateur astronomer doesn't love looking at others equipment photos online?

Thanks to Tom and Neil from Astronomia/Telescope Outlet for taking care of me.

Lunar 9 - RC8 First Lunar Light

Here's a sneaky first light of my new 8" Ritchey Chrétien telescope. 

Torrent of posts to follow, I promise.

OTA: 8" Ritchey Chrétien

Camera: Nikon D3100 14.2mp

Mount: HEQ5

Exposures: 125

Exposure: 1/350sec

ISO: 100