This is my first posted image with my new CEM120. It's been a long and difficult road with this new mount. Hopefully, I am close to having things worked out. As part of my final testing, I have been shooting a couple of DSO's at 1260 mm focal length (the 8se with the f/6.3 FR). Guiding performance has been good. My PHD logs show that the CEM120 has much less error than the AVX (which you would hope and expect for a $4,000 mount vs. a $750 mount...) .
Still struggling with that last little bit of elongation on the stars. Can't really go past 4 minute subs without too much trailing. A few weeks back I was able to d 7 minutes subs on the CEM120 with perfectly round stars. I'm still not sure how I pulled that off. I have not been able to repeat it since. Everything is tight and all cables are tied down. Polar alignment is excellent (within 1 minute according to PHD and within only 14 seconds according to SharpCap) I am thinking that balance is part of this issue. I get different amounts of trailing depending on where the object is in the sky. I'll post some gearshots and more details in a separate post.
For reference, I used an old master flat from a few months ago for this one. At 1:15 am and 23 F, I did not feel like shooting new flats last night.
I might shoot some with my LED panel this week and re-process.
Anyway, I liked this image and wanted to share it. Thanks for looking!
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