One of the things I’ve been planning to do for some time is getting an auto-guider working with the club CG-5 mount. I had plans for the old Starlight-Xpress camera but it’s just to heavy for the off-axis guider to support. The purchase of an Imaging Source camera by the club has re-opened the possibilities here.
A clear, moonlit night provided a perfect opportunity to get this setup and I put the Celestron 9.25″ on the mount with the guide camera and my QHY-9C hanging off the radial guider on the back. What became clear pretty quickly was that I couldn’t get both cameras into focus at the same time. I was short of about 15mm of T2 tube on the QHY. The rest of the testing appeared to run OK though so I’ll just need to obtain a new extension tube before I can try again.
As I’m always reluctant to pack up without imaging anything I turned the telescope towards M42 in Orion for some 30 second unguided frames. 10 were stacked and processed for this picture.
More light required!