I'm a sucker for a good deal...  I happened to be browsing the classifieds in Cloudy Nights and came across this instrument for a smoking price.  I like the Vixen Newt I have so I thought I would give this one a shot in the hope that I could perhaps get something fun to work with.

I like my Edge 9.25 very much except I do not love the stars it makes.  It could quite possibly be a user issue and even so,  I will likely never part with the scope.  But I thought there might be some improvement in stars generally with the VC200L, they do advertise a flat field and pinpoint stars after all.  In any case, I did buy the scope and after a coupe of nights trying to fine tune the collimation and get it set up, this is the first image I was able to capture.  

I think I am really close but not perfect on the collimation and I did find that I could not guide this at 1800mm with an OAG at the fast guiding needed with the RST-135.  Just not enough signal to keep locked on.  So I put a guide scope on the rig and did some capturing.

For a first light, I was impressed and I think the scope has some nice potential.  I think a globular like this is a nice test especially with a quarter moon blazing away.  I would have liked to have included the bright orange and bright blue foreground stars that are commonly captured with this subject but as luck would have it, my rotation was off.  I considered rotating it and re-taking my flats but time was flying by and the moon was only getting brighter so I went with it as is.  It was really supposed to be only a test anyway but I was pleased with it so I kept at it.

I also experimented with dithering by increasing the amount by quite a bit.  I think the increase had a nice affect on the masters, they were very clean except for a little bit of a shadow from the OAG which I left in place because I had the back focus just right.  The only issue with doing that is that I had to crop off a little bit more than usual because of stacking artifacts.

Anyway, I look forward to using this for some PNs and some galaxies and other smaller targets.  Hope you like this one, clear skies and good health to you all!