Yes !! The Auto-Focus Finally Works !!

Oh yeah !!
Need larger step size ...

CFF RC - Still Struggle with the Auto-Focus

Not sure what happen... ;-(

CFF 250mm RC - Frist Light

Finally one cold and clear night for me to test the new RC !!
Pictures only...

2018 CalStar - Visual Observation of the Markarian 205 Quasar

This is the first time that I attend a star party without doing any imaging...

I picked and studied a couple of challenging targets for my 10" Dob and the particular one is the Markarian 205 Quasar. This Quasar is over 1B light years away from us.

The picture is from http://heritage.stsci.edu/2002/23/supplemental.html

The 14-mag target is very faint for my 10" scope. I observed this for more than an hour and can only see the it about 10% of the time. Hopefully I will get a larger scope in the future to re-visit this target.

Here is my drawing of this target:

I also observe the two faint galaxies near M13

My son, Adrain, also did a drawing on M13... ;-)

Some more images of this party ...

Final Process - NGC7000 3x3 Mosaic (Ha Only)

This is the largest mosaic I ever done - the size of the final image is 8489 × 6123.

NGC7000 is a large target and took me 15 nights (48hr) to collect enough data from my Fremont backyard. Required 3x3 mosaic to cover this...

Detail and large image at https://www.astrobin.com/364311