Thank yall , I kept processing and with patience came this. The weather has been tropical here and honey do list kept growing , I've been hurting too bad to get out but, hopefully things will turn around.

 

I've been trying to get back to it but, this heat and storms at night just don't do the sky justice. I took advantage of the downtime and cleaned up my imaging train ; primary & secondary mirrors, lenses , Coma Corrector and sensors in all my cameras. Lined the guide with the main camera , all that's left is collimating the 8"Black Widow in the evening then I'll be off and running. I thank you and appreciate the comments fellas , I make mistakes and I do try learning from them but, my memory after days of not getting out are time consuming mistakes. Mistakes after the meridian flip are so costly in my color data collection. Only if I could use all the data that I collected, instead of dumping channels because of my camera having an oil leak from I believe it was the tec fan lubricant.

 

That's what I did for the first 5 years . Trial and error is the way to becoming one with the force. I don't know anyone who hasn't pulled their hair out, whether it's viewing or shooting astrophotography. Learn your equipment, learn your night sky, you can read a dozen books on astrophotography but, there is no book telling you how to speed things along. Collimation you can use either a collimating eyepiece cap or a good collimating laser {get your eye centered or the beam of the laser in the center of the ring on the mirror and covering the dot on your laser collimator {the beam should be shooting off in 2 directions from the dot} its collimated. Then tighten up the thumbscrews real tight but, don't lose your split beams . Then get close look down the focus tube without anything in it and your eyeball should be in the center of the of the mirror. If it isn't, then the next step is a time consumer, it might be adjusting the tilt of the primary or the misalignment of the secondary mirror. It can be anything but, these are the most common in what I used to deal with. Don't be in a hurry , that's when things can get bad . REPEAT troubleshooting. A bahtinov mask is the trick to focusing .

 

I use both collimation cap and a $50 laser collimator but, that's astrophotography .Dead center or close as possible even though I don't have to collimate it with the laser except if I take the image train out to clean. A collimation cap is priceless with a focuser precision centering adapter , I use that piece of plastic every time I go out to image. Keep looking up