First light - IC410

20:26 7/3/2009 UTC

Atik 4000LE First Light! Weather was awful and I had some serious hassle with my gear. First of all I set my telescope in a position where trees cut the exposure short and then there was something wrong with PC charger. I burned some 5 fuses while debugging the setup. And if that wasn't enough I forgot to set the mount hand unit to slow speed and screwed up 30 minutes of valuable exposure. Anyway I got my first image with a CCD and this was bad enough weather to spend time on practising. Nothing spectacular in the image but first is a first!

Camera: Atik Instruments 4000LE | Telescope: Skywatcher ED80 Pro 80mm f7.5 refractor, William Optics 0.8x focal reducer | Mount: Vixen GP-D2, Boxdoerfer PowerFlex MTS-3SLP drive controller | Filters: Astronomik H-alpha 13nm 2" | Guiding: , The Imaging Source DMK 21AU04.AS CCD camera, Orion ShortTube 80mm f5 refractor, Stark-Labs PHD Guiding | Exposure: Ha: 3x600s (30m) f6 CCD @ -10°C | Software: CCDWare CCDStack, Adobe Photoshop CS4, Artemis Capture | Location: 60°31'N 26°52'E (Koivula/Kotka,FI)