Having enjoyed consecutive clear nights, this is my 4th experiment or adventure with my new Star Adventurer mount. This time using my Meade f6.3 focal reducer to provide an effective focal length of ~200mm at this imaging scale.

Immediately one can see that the stars are far better, considering this is a big reduction from the native focal length of 545mm and using an old reducer designed for my 8" SCT. I managed 5min exposures with my Star Adventurer and ST4 auto-guiding (RA only) with average ~1 arc second. For the first time in my life, yes you heard me correctly, I had to do a meridian flip! Having only ever worked with SCT fork mounts this is a new experience for me! It took me a while to get to grips with the 180 degree rotation, and to reacquire the frame (using plate-solving with ASTAP and HNSKY as described in my last image).

Unfortunately, in the process, I managed to ‘flip out’ my CMOS camera from the scope compression ring, and it hit the concrete 2 feet below...youch! Apart from a damaged 2" to SCT adapter, the camera suffered no damage...phew 🫣. I've posted as Revision C, as a reminder to me to tighten down the compression rings properly in future.

As with my other images, data were collected in ATP, and pre-processed using Nebulosity 4. The original (A) is my final version, post-processed in Startools v1.8. I used a standard workflow, but took some time to try and get a good colour balance in the SN remnants and background starfield - I haven't progressed to narrowband with RGB stars yet. Pushing back the stars enabled me to pull out the detail and magnificent colours in these veils. Stars are gently tweaked. Revision B is the same data with simple processing in Nebulosity, using levels and curves, star reduction, but no noise reduction.

Apart from extra integration - I lost 40min dark sky time retrieving my camera and realigning the image - I don't think I can really improve on this with this setup, apart from spending more money. For me, this has been an important experiment in getting the best out of quite modest equipment, and a number of firsts - my first proper image of this wonderful supernova remnant, my first meridian flip, and my first serious near-miss - in short, I'm 'flipping pleased'.