M83 Galaxy(QHY8 Camera First Light- more data added on March 28th 2009)

Here is my second image using the QHY8 Tec Cooled Camera on the 12" Lx200r .

It's the Southern Pinwheel galaxy(M83). The galaxy is about 15000 light years away.

This is stack of about 3 hours (10x 15 min + 3 x 10 mins + darks + flats).  It has been fairly heavily processed to try and bring the details out of the murky sky.

I appear to be having an RA distortion issue as well. Guiding was done through PHD Guider with a QHY5 guide camera an ED80. All seems to be working well. I had fine tuned the PEC and Polar alignment but I can't stop the stars from being elongated in RA. I think there might be some misalignment in the imaging train somewhere, others are indicating it may be due to flexure. The elongation of the stars does not seem to change with the exposure length (although I did not think to try a really short exposure to check out the theory of missaligned optics or camera somewhere). 

Eta Carina Nebula

This is another image I took on the same night to test the camera and scope. Its the heart of the eta carina nebula (the keyhole nebula).

This is a created from a number of different length exposures ranging from 10 mins to 3 mins for a total of one hour. No Darks.