Its been 4 months since I first received the Edge HD11 and it has been quite a learning experience going from a relatively easy RASA 8 to the long focal length of the Edge HD 11. Back focus has been a challenge and switching to an off axis guider has forced steep learning curves. I think the biggest change is the method I approach the imaging session. With the fast optics of the RASA 8 you are pretty safe taking lots of 15s or 30s images and stacking them to get to a good picture. This works out well in the Caribbean because we tend to have a lot of wispy clouds so losing 25% of your 15s images over 2 hours is not that big of deal.
The Edge HD 11, even with the 0.7 Reducer is still a much slower optical train and has caused me to go for longer exposures just so that they will stack. I first noticed when my normal live stacking during imaging wasn't working and couldn't figure out why, but that's more of a cool feature than a necessity. Until I started having issues with Pixinsight or Deep Sky Stacker having issues stacking or aligning the images. To my eye I can see the stars but what I found out is that there is not enough light for the software to stack it. Once I bumped by imaging to 3 or 5 min exposures then the issues with live stacking and post-processing started going away.
So now that I have the Edge HD11 figured out... well kind of figured out, I've started returning to some of the targets I first took with the RASA, and being that it is Galaxy season those targets are M51 and M101. The detail of the higher magnification provides is truly remarkable.
M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy
The first image is M51 taken with the RASA 8, you can see the galaxy and that there are two of them merging but its pretty small compared to the field of view of the telescope. The RASA 8 has a focal length of 400mm
This second one is taken with the Edge HD11 using a 0.7 Reducer making the focal length around 1980mm, all most 5 times the focal length of the RASA. The results are amazing to see the spiral arms and the diffusion of the small galaxy.
M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy
Both of these images where taking with quite a bit of moon pollution so the colors are off but it definitely shows the difference between the RASA and the Edge HD. I can't remember if I cropped the RASA image, but I think that was something I did a lot during the early days.
Again the Edge HD showing a lot more detail. I'd like to do some Ha images to pull out the star forming locations in M101 but my ZWO ASI1600MM is not working at the moment and I'm trying to get approval from ZWO to send it back to OPTcorp.
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