I have been itching to get this telescope out and imaging for 2 months but too early in the season, poor weather and other projects needed to be completed on the refractor.

Moving from a refractor to an RC is not for the faint hearted! I have done quite a bit of fiddling, I tested the OAG and found that I could not get it close enough to the focus plane so reverted to on axis guiding, balancing was tricky, collimation, polar alignment with OAG (impossible), mounting a ZWO EAF etc etc.

Out of the box, collimation appeared to be fairly ok, made some minor adjustments to the secondary mirror, however I believe their is slight sensor tilt resulting in stars to the upper right having "Einstein hair" - confirmed by CCDInspector (sensor tilt not Einstein Hair). I spent two nights imaging M92 and to my surprise the extra weight seems to have really made a huge difference to my guiding, I have been achieving consistent 0.5-0.6 Total RMS! While this is great I think my stars would be a lot tighter with the use of the OAG - image scale difference between main and guide scopes is a factor of 7, a bit too much. Using the OAG will be a good test of the mounts limitations and the fact that my rig is not on a concrete pier.......... we'll see - another reason to spend more money lol

I will attempt this image again using the OAG (found a solution) for comparison. Am also awaiting a tilt collimator so this should sharpen my stars. Can't wait to get this fully operational.

- No dithering and minimal post processing

C&C are more than welcome, am particularly interested in thoughts around my stars and whether their shape is due sensor tilt, poor collimation, a combination or something else. (I used an out of focus star to collimate)

One huge lesson learned is that seeing is key, I had excellent seeing which drastically helped my guiding. I understand now that poor seeing really affects long FL setups.

Anyway, looking promising so far.

CS

Brad