
AP130GTX Telescope, Apogee U8300 CCD, AP900GTO Mount
50x5min exposures from Clinton, TN (Moderate Light Pollution)
Due to a moisture breach of my camera causing frosting issues which caused me to throw out all but 4.5 hours of data out of 18 I figured I might as well post this as it’s not going to get much better. Image scale was 1.31 arcsec/pixel which seems to give fairly decent sampling for the average seeing here in East Tennessee. Imaging location just outside Clinton, TN with average SQM measurements ranging from 20.1 to 20.4 mag/arcsec^2.
I’ve temporarily pulled the portable (read small) rig out onto my back patio by the pool which has a narrow window allowing imaging of the southern sky. Since the move to TN I haven’t had a lot of time to do any astronomical imaging but the bug to get out do some imaging finally got to me.
Working on a redesign of my imaging rig to incorporate an AP130EDT f/8 refractor for narrowfield imaging alongside the FSQ widefield setup. This was a test shot through the scope using an Apogee U8300 and Baader Ha filter to prevent saturating the chip.