Observing Reports
January 2007
24th January 2007
Another long spell on not being able to get out under the stars as the weather has been the worst in ages.
The sky was very clear tonight and I setup the equipment around 6:30pm. Orion was gaining height to the South and was looking like a great target.
For a change though I turned my attention to Ursa Major and tried for the two nearby galaxies M81 & M82.
I had to carry out a drift alignment as I had taken apart the telescope mount so as to figure out sizes for a mount plate. I would really like to build a pier for the scope soon but locating a plastic tube is causing some difficulty.
But anyway, after a very quick drift alignment (which by the way worked excellent) I located the galaxies and started guiding.
At first I thought the mount and PHD Guiding wasn’t working well as the East & West calibrations failed. Tried again and it seemed to calibrate. I think the problem comes down to shooting near the North Pole.
For this shot I used my LP Filter and managed around 2 hours of exposure in 4 min frames. So far I have carried out a first process and only had may be three frames that could not be used. Looks like the wind blew the mount a tad.
Going to process the images soon and see what I have captured. A quick look and it does seem quite good.
I also left the 350D taking images in the garage over night for the 30 dark frames as it was a work night and I wasn’t going to stay out too late.
On a separate note, while the scope was capturing the light frames I tried some naked eye observations and located Canis Minor and a few other constellations. I also tried for a few deep sky objects and noticed The Double Cluster, M44, and a few clusters in Auriga.
It was a very clear night and I could probably see down to mag 5.
9th January 2007
First night out in 2007 and it was quite clear.
The past few months have been very stormy and I haven’t had much chance to use the scope and image lately.
Tonight was going to be different, but the ground underfoot was still very wet and muddy.
Set the scope up and started imaging M42 “The Orion Nebula”. I feel like I now have a lot more experience imaging was really hoping to get some great frames of this amazing nebula.
Unfortunately, a large cloud snuck up on me from the west and soaked me, the scopes, laptop, everything!
I ran into the garage and brought out a large water-proof sheet and hid under it with the scope and laptop but the wind was too strong and I almost took off!
Luckily things were not too wet and a wipe down in the garage sorted it.
So did I get any good images? Well yes I feel I did. 21 minutes worth of “The Orion Nebula & The Running Man”. I also managed to expose the core correctly and use Photoshop to create a mask over the image. I did carry out a lot of processing but I’m very pleased with the final result.
Lets hope I can get out for longer next time.