Was out last night taking advantage of the few clear nights we've had this week in Phoenix.  It's been almost a month since we've had a clear night that was not 1,000,000 degrees.  I have a new portable setup for my Vixen ED103S so I can take it up to Overgaard in the summer and when I want to take advantage of the Bortle 1 skies at our place up north.  I ordered one of the new Pegasus NYX-101 Strain wave mounts from Agena Astro and it arrived a few weeks ago.  I also picked up a nice Berlebach Uni 18 tripod to hold everything.  I have to say those Berlebach tripods are a work of art and a functional wonder.  Really loving this setup.  Here is a quick shot of it in my back yard.



While I have another strain wave mount with my AM5 that holds my Redcat 51, this setup works just a bit different.  This is to be expected.  I've gotten past the first couple of sessions with the new setup where you discover everything you're doing wrong and I'm finally in the mode where I can be semi productive during an evenings shooting.  So far I'm liking what I see.  The OTA assembly is just under 30lbs and the NYX seems to handle it with no problem.  Current tracking/guiding is in the realm of 0.7" - 1.0' range.  Not ideal but not so bad you cannot get a decent image.  There is a bit of fine tuning I need to do to get it completely dialed in.  This setup is harder to get a good PA than my Redcat setup but then again, I'm dealing with an OTA with 3x the focal length and at least double the weight.  How's that saying go? "There is no free lunch".

On to my image, IC1396 is always a fan favorite for obvious reasons.  I actually this a year ago on my Redcat setup.  It had a much wider field of view.  With my Vixen I was able to zero in on main feature of the nebula much better.  Post was a snap with PI and the great plugins from RCAstro (NoiseXterminator and BlurXterminator).  Looking forward to taking this up north to see what I can do in the clear dark skies.