Deep in the throes of COVID quarantine in May 2020, I purchased a Celestron EdgeHD 1100 (C11). This was way more telescope than I was ready to handle at the time. I was completely unfamiliar with things like backfocus, collimating a Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector, guiding, sequencing, and just about every other aspect of astrophotography. I would have been better off with a small refractor as my first foray into imaging. But in retrospect, the trial by fire this scope brought to my doorstep forced me to learn and lot and learn it fast.

Probably the most troublesome part of using this scope was with Celestron CGX-L mount. Of all the frustrations I experienced early on, the mount created the worst of them. In the two years I used it, I never really did get it to track the way I needed it to in order to take good astro images.

Another early difficulty was figuring out how best to approach guiding. At first, I tried using a guide scope. I had read that I needed a guidescope with a focal length around on-third to one-fourth the focal length of the telescope. But that would have required a fairly large refractor with at least a 700mm focal length. I went with a William Optics Guidestar 61 guide scope and a ZWO ASI174MM-Mini guide camera. It didn't work. Just too small. It's saving grace was that it worked well with the Hyperstar configuration, which reduces the C11's focal length from 2800mm to 540mm. So I hung on to that guide scope. When using the C11 at the full 2800mm focal length, I mounted a ZWOASI294MC on it and did dual imaging. At this point, I shifted gears and tried using a Celestron Off-Axis Guider (OAG). This produced much better guiding results for me, but it was a very tight squeeze to get that to fit with the camera and filter drawer into the C11's precise 146.05mm backfocus requirement. And unbeknownst to me at the time, the Celestron OAG was introducing tilt issues that reduced the quality of my imaging. Still, it was indeed a vast improvement and enabled me to get my first good shots of the cosmos. At first, I was using a one-shot-color (OSC) camera, the ZWO ASI2400MC. It's a great camera and produced some fabulous results, but I knew that some day I would have to move to a monochrome camera. I was also using the stock focuser on the C11 which is notorious for mirror-flop—the tendency of the primary mirror to change angles slightly during focus operations or when the telescope moves. After a few private one-on-one imaging lessons with the Astrodoc Ron Brecher in May 2020, I knew it was time to take a step up. I replaced the mount with a 10Micron GM1000, the ASI2400 camera gave way to a monochrome ZWO ASI6200MM with filter wheel and Chroma filters, I swapped the Celestron OAG for a ZWO OAG-L, and I installed a Moonlite Litecrawler focuser-rotator on the back so I could lock down the mirrors and avoid the mirror-flop issue. Backfocus was a challenge, but the great and powerful Tolga helped me work all that out. All these changes dramatically improved the quality of my imaging and I still use a configuration much like this today.

There have been screwups along the way—like the time early on when the scope got rained on and I had to send the CGX-L off to Celestron for repair. But the worst incident came in June of 2022 when I failed to thoroughly lock down one of the legs on the tripod before loading everything onto it. It was just tight enough to last until about midnight. I first noticed the stars moving on the guide screen. Then I looked up just as the rig tipped over and slammed the telescope into the edge of the concrete pad.

Fortunately, no glass was broken. The only damage was to the tube of the telescope and to the focuser. The mount, camera, and other accessories were all okay. Celestron replaced the tube and realigned everything for a mere $175. And Ron at Moonlite realigned the focuser for no charge. So it could have been a whole lot worse! Since then, there have been no incidents with the C11 and it has continued to function well, although these days I only employ it for visual use and planetary photography.