I've got a few of these now in my gallery. It's a great target to perform any star tests as you've got a lot of close up small, medium and larger stars in the main clusters and a sea of stars all around. It's also a good target for a night with poor skies (a big moon and plenty of moisture in this instance).
I've been trying to get my SharpStar dialled in again since switching camera and this - finally - feels like a positive step. Not perfect yet but good enough to enjoy it for a while if I can stop myself playing further. It seems to have been the spacing, although after several months I'm beginning to question everything related to getting this scope dialled in. My previous camera - the solid 183MM - just went straight on with the required backspace and no issues across the frame!
The scope was absolutely soaking after a few hours this particular night and as I was "just testing" I hadn't fitted a dew heater to the guide scope either. I was slowly watching the PHD2 star SNR drop and drop. When I packed up the guide scope looked like this:
The SharpStar likes to catch every stray light and reflection it can so the background wasn't great. It stopped pushing too hard but there's not much data anyway.
Captured with N.I.N.A. Pre-processed in APP and processed in PixInsight.
Thanks for looking.
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