I have recently shared my efforts to pull together a new lightweight portable rig - but at that time I had NOT yet tested it and confirmed that it would perform to my satisfaction.

Link: https://astrob.in/kf6whg/0/

Of course, once you get new gear, the clouds roll in and shut everything down for a 100 mile radius (sorry my fellow astro friends!) - and this was true in my case as well - except that this occurred in a really cruel way…. We have had a string of really nice days, but once it began to get dark, the clouds would suddenly roll-in and shut me down for the evening.

This changed on the first of June. I waited for the clouds - but they never came! So I finally started to test things out.

Leveled the mount… Check!

Set zero position and locked the mounts axes…. Check!

Plug in all of the cables…. Check!

Hook up my Polar Alignment camera… Check!

Run Ipolar software and do Polar Alignment… Check!

Run my Guiding Software and set it up…. Build dark library, establish center of rotation, run cal and Guiding Assistant… Check"

Watch the guiding for a while… Check!

Fire up Sequence Generator Pro and Select the FPA Hardware Profile…. Check!

Connect all devices and allow the camera to start cooling…. Check!

Test camera capture… Check!

Manual Rough Focus….Check!

Test Auto-Focus…. Check!

Test Object Slewing and Centering (thus testing Plate-solving as well)… Check!

Us the Mosaic Planning tool to setup a test sequence on M13… Check!

Run test sequence….Check

Use my newly build Flat Cal light source to capture Flats… Check!

Capture Darks and Flat Dark cal frames…. Check!

Verify Meridian Flips are handled right.. Check!

All-in-all, it was a very productive night!

Attached is my very first image from this platform. I am very pleased. Guiding was good. The stars were round, tight, and nicely formed and crisp right to the edge of the field. Everything seemed to work as it should! So the next night of Astrophotography will have THREE rigs running!

M13 is well know, but here is a summary from Wikipedia for your convenience:

"M13 was discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, and cataloged by Charles Messier on June 1, 1764, into his list of objects not to mistake for comets; Messier's

list, including Messier 13, eventually became known as the Messier Catalog.…..



About 145 light-years in diameter, M13 is composed of several hundred thousand stars, the brightest of which is a red giant, the variable star V11, also known as V1554 Herculis,I have recently shared my efforts to pull together a new lightweight portable rig - but at that time I had NOT yet tested it and confirmed that it would perform to my satisfaction.

Link: https://astrob.in/kf6whg/0/

Of course, once you get new gear, the clouds roll in and shut everything down for a 100 mile radius (sorry my fellow astro friends!) - and this was true in my case as well - except that this occurred in a really cruel way…. We have had a string of really nice days, but once it began to get dark, the clouds would suddenly roll-in and shut me down for the evening.

This changed on the first of June. I waited for the clouds - but they never came! So I finally started to test things out.

Leveled the mount… Check!

Set zero position and locked the mounts axes…. Check!

Plug in all of the cables…. Check!

Hook up my Polar Alignment camera… Check!

Run Ipolar software and do Polar Alignment… Check!

Run my Guiding Software and set it up…. Build dark library, establish center of rotation, run cal and Guiding Assistant… Check"

Watch the guiding for a while… Check!

Fire up Sequence Generator Pro and Select the FPA Hardware Profile…. Check!

Connect all devices and allow the camera to start cooling…. Check!

Test camera capture… Check!

Manual Rough Focus….Check!

Test Auto-Focus…. Check!

Test Object Slewing and Centering (thus testing Plate-solving as well)… Check!

Us the Mosaic Planning tool to setup a test sequence on M13… Check!

Run test sequence….Check

Use my newly build Flat Cal light source to capture Flats… Check!

Capture Darks and Flat Dark cal frames…. Check!

Verify Meridian Flips are handled right.. Check!

All-in-all, it was a very productive night!

Attached is my very first image from this platform. I am very pleased. Guiding was good. The stars were round, tight, and nicely formed and crisp right to the edge of the field. Everything seemed to work as it should! So the next night of Astrophotography will have THREE rigs running!

M13 is well know, but here is a summary from Wikipedia for your convenience:

"M13 was discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, and cataloged by Charles Messier on June 1, 1764, into his list of objects not to mistake for comets; Messier's

list, including Messier 13, eventually became known as the Messier Catalog.…..



About 145 light-years in diameter, M13 is composed of several hundred thousand stars, the brightest of which is a red giant, the variable star V11, also known as V1554 Herculis,[with an apparent visual magnitude of 11.95. M13 is 22,200–25,000 light-years away from Earth.

Single stars in this globular cluster were first resolved in 1779.[ Compared to the stars in the neighborhood of the Sun, the stars of the M13 population are more than a hundred times denser.[ They are so densely packed together that they sometimes collide and produce new stars. The newly formed, young stars, so-called "blue stragglers", are particularly interesting to astronomers."

Thanks for looking!

Pat

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Here are the details of this simple test image:

20 x 30 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II L Filter

10 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II R Filter

10 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II G Filter

10 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II B Filter

Total of 1.3 hours

45 Darks at 30 seconds, bin 1x1, -15C, Unity gain

45 Darks at 120 seconds, bin 1x1, -15C, Unity gain

30 Dark Flats at Flat exposure times, bin 1x1, -15C, unity gain

40 R Flats

40 G Flats

40 B Flats

40 L Flats

Capture Hardware:

Scope: Askar 72mm f/5.6 Quintuplet Petzval Flat-Field Astrograph # FRA400

Guide Scope: Wiliams Optics 50mm Guidescope

Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro with ZWO 8x1.25" Filter wheel with ZWO LRGB filter set,

and Astronomiks 6nm Narrowband filter set

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: ZWO EAF 5V

Mount: Ioptron CEM26

Power and USB Distribution: Pegasus Astro Powerbox Advanced

Polar Alignment: Ipola camera

Software:

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Pixinsight, Photoshop - assisted by Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, editor regret and much swearing…..