The iOptron HAE29EC is out of the box and into the driveway. Spent about 3 hours assembling the physical parts and performing a dry run with the software. Still encountered a few strange things during the session...but hopefully they will become less strange with time.

When running on the target, the HAE29EC was quite remarkable. Of course, it's carrying a lightweight, wide-field WOGT71 at 334mm, so the bar is not high.

This image is strictly a test. I had an extra camera to use, but it is a planetary camera with no cooling and it's only 14bit...the ASI294. The 4/3" sensor is fairly noisy on DSO targets. The moon was out. I ran only 27 subs. The subs were 60 seconds each (image was benefiting from the ƒ4.48 aperture).

What is cool is that this session was unguided. No guide scope even attached. The early subs produced perfectly round stars, demonstrating that the encoder-assisted tracking was accurate. As the session advanced, stars became more horizontally oval, with a few subs showing "double-image" stars. In my experience, this is due to high-altitude haze moving in. The layer refracts light differently and superimposes that image on the main one. A guided sub would partially adjust for this.

The aberration was small enough that BlurX completely eliminated it. Otherwise, I've run the stack through Pixinsight and applied all of the usual tricks to maximize visual impact, but the bottom line is that the HAE29EC did a pretty nice job. My objective was to assemble a setup that is almost as travel-friendly as the SeeStar, but with better images. I hope I've succeeded—the whole rig with tripod is only 24 pounds. That's less than the counterweights alone on my other dedicated DSO setup.

I'll next try the ASI2600MC Pro (cooled) in a guided configuration. Smaller pixels, less noise, 16bit, and it's APSC (larger apparent FOV). Will need to readjust guiding settings to suit harmonic drive.