‘First Light’ from my little observatory - a quick image of Thor’s Helmet (NGC2359)..
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Nice that you centered Orion’s Belt perfectly over your new acquisition. Is that the astronomer’s version of “Hello, world”?
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It seemed fitting! It’s great to have an observatory again. While it’s not as nice as the roll of roof observatory I had in Ohio, this will serve me well for the next few years.
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I thought that only Pisces constellation shots are now allowed 
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New telescope day!
This is an Askar 131F refractor. It’s a good bit bigger than my 75mm scope that I have been using for the past couple of years. This one has a longer focal length and is better suited for imaging smaller targets such as galaxies and planets, so not a replacement but it will complement the other scope very nicely. Of course, it will be cloudy tonight but maybe I will get the chance to use it next week.
For comparison, my 75mm scope looks quite small sat next it’s 130mm sibling (and I haven’t added any equipment to it yet).
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Must be the day for it… Cloudy and getting a new ‘lens’.
I’m picking up a 200 - 500 f/5.6 today when I head into town.
Photos later in the camera/photography thread.
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Nothing like a bit of retail therapy! 
Guide scope, electronic autofocuser, rotator and camera attached. I’m actually quite proud of my cable management on this one. I’m going to have to work on that with my 75mm scope!
I’m pretty much ready to attach the package to the mount now. The only thing missing now is a dew Control Strip for the main and guide scopes. The whole assembly weighs 26 Lbs/11.8 Kg and is about 3ft 5 inches long (105cm) not including the length of the cables.
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Very tidy job.
I’m looking forward to seeing the results.
Me too… I am going to pick up a better guide scope for it. My intention is to have preconfigured ‘payloads’ that I can easily swap out. Ultimately I would like two independent imaging rigs for wide and short field.. but that would require an additional mount which is going to set me back a tidy sum. I will just have to take it out of my kid’s college fund I guess! My kids are furry and I kind of doubt they will miss it…
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So are ours… I have already sepnt their inheritance 
Because without opposable thumbs they are no bloody help at all when it comes to mowing the lawn or doing the washing up.
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Well, tonight is clear, and I’m at home, so despite the fact that the Moon bright, I decided to get the new scope out for it’s ‘first light’..
All set up on my portable pier.
This is a 10 second night shot with my phone camera. The light pollution looking south toward Austin is getting worse with every passing year.
I wanted to try a galaxy for my first outing with the new scope. This is Messier 64 more commonly known as the Black Eye Galaxy. I think the Moon is going to prevent this from being a great image as a lot of the fainter detail will be washed out. Still, I am really happy with the way the mount is handling the weight. That autoguiding graph is a thing of beauty…ie very flat.
If the sub exposures start looking too washed out I will hop over to M13 which is a large Globular Cluster in Hercules.
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I am guessing that what we are looking at there is a single frame with zero processing?
I any case I look forward to the results.
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Yes, that’s straight out of the camera. 1 x 3 minute exposure.
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Here is the image from last night, M64 The Black Eye galaxy..
This is just 40 x 3 minute exposures stacked. I had to wrap it up earlier than planned last night due to a hazy layer of cloud that came through. Still, for a first light session I think it went quite well. The background is a bit noisy, so I will probably have another go at processing the data to see if I can fix that.
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That’s wonderful Paul - love it!
Looking good already.
Looking forward to seeing more pics taken with that setup.
Amazing. And I know the uploaded file size and my monitor aren’t doing that image justice.