For a long time (actually since I bought it) I wanted to test my Nexstar Evolution 6 with an equatorial mount and long exposures. However it was out of collimation after I used it with the Hyperstar C6:

- The secondary mirror holder got loose when I tried to take the hyperstar off and I had to take the corrector plate off in order to tighten it;

- In addition I installed Bob's Knobs

So my new adventure started with collimation. I had read that an SCT can be easily collimated with a Duncan Mask so I had one printed out. I put it on the scope and pointed towards a bright star. Saw a distorted Y and tried to fix it. Not only that I didn't fix it but I made things a lot worse. Then I decided to try without the mask and use just the defocused star. Using the manual on the Celestron site I managed to collimate my scope. The process turned out to be quite easy. Now I have pinpoint stars in the center on my view and comets towards the edges but I read that this is fixed with an EdgeHD SCT

Next step from the adventure - Platesolve at 1500 mm Here it turned out that I need additional 5-6 gb of maps. Installed them and everything began to work. I set the exposure to 15 seconds, take one shot, solve it and SharpCap centers my object. Great.

The last two clear night were with full Moon so I searched for a target that I could image with a narrowband filter. I found M97 to be the only target in the night sky at the moment which could be observed all night.

As per the specification of my Nexstar Evolution 6 its resolution is as follows:

Resolution (Rayleigh): 0.93 arc seconds

Resolution (Dawes): 0.77 arc seconds

I imaged at 0,52" per pixel so I expected to have oversampling. Yes the image is not that clear but I think I got round stars at 1500 mm.

So this is my result from two nights from the city with 5 minutes subs and a full Moon.

I really enjoyed this adventure.