Since the beginning of 2025 I have been working on a new wide-field setup — a new telescope, mount, camera, tilter, filters. Thanks to the invaluable help of Kamil Fiedosiuk I managed to resolve a multitude of problems. There are still quite a few issues left to solve, but the equipment finally works!

I assembled my first image — the Elephant’s Trunk in a wide shot. This dark nebula is located in the constellation Cepheus and lies 2400 light years from Earth. The nebula is surrounded by a much more diffuse region of ionized gas. The photo was taken through Antlia Highspeed Ha, OIII and SII narrowband filters, all 2" in diameter with a 3 nm bandwidth. An interesting fact is that in fast optical systems light enters at a steep angle, causing narrowband filters to lose efficiency due to the transmission band shift, known as bandpass shift. The filters used are the highspeed version, designed for optical systems from F/2.6 to F/3.6, which compensates for bandpass shift effects by shifting the filter passband.