First light is always exciting. Sometimes good, sometimes not as good. This one worked out pretty well for the new to me Apertura 75Q I picked up via Cloudy Nights. The scope is 75mm aperture with a 405mm focal length which gives it a F/ratio of 5.4. Not blazingly fast but not terribly slow either. It uses some exotic glass to correct chromatic aberration and seems to do a reasonable job at that. Not much was noticed in the corners. There is some but not enough for me to worry about since I’m just taking pretty pictures and not doing actual science (yet).
This image was first light on the scope. Photons were collected on a QHY 268C after they passed through an Optolong L-eNhance filter giving me mostly Hydrogen-alpha and Oxygen-III frequencies. This was done in my very bright Bortle 9 back yard on the 5th of November. Side note: watch V for Vendetta if you haven’t already, it’s excellent even though it has Natalie Portman in it. This is 25 sub-exposures of 10 minutes for 4 hours, 10 minutes of total integration time. Not bad for a first night out.
