Torn between karate or getting the scope out I opted for the scope as I hadn’t seen the sky for a couple of weeks. An early finish from work meant the scope was setup and ready for action by 6:30pm but as usual I left M57 on the screen to get an idea of today’s drift. To my surprise there’s not a great deal of movement in the image at the moment so I’m hoping to have a good evening at the controls. 

From M57 I stayed looking west but moved on to Albireo the double with blue and yellow stars. It’s a nice target and allowed me to fine tune the focus as both stars are bright enough to give me nice diffraction spikes to focus with. A few frames here before moving on again to the Cat Eye Nebula.

I’d not tried the Cat Eye before so a nice surprise to find it visible while the camera was still set to 0.5 second exposures.

I have trouble with the camera, it’ll stop functioning but keep the last good frame on the screen so unless you watch a long exposure end and the next start you’d not notice there was a problem. The fix is to unplug the camera from the laptop, then reconnect. This usually results in a blue screen of death which then needs to be restarted, reload all the software and realign the scope. I’m hoping that when my Christmas pressent arrives I won’t get this problem any more. I’ve ordered the Atik 16IC mono so that I can see what a real astro cam can so. I can’t wait for it to arrive from Ian King Imaging but I’ve been told I can’t use it until Christmas.

I think I should check my wiring in the SPC900NC as I’m sure I never connected the circuit ground to the parallel port ground which may explain the erratic behaviour. I have to get this fixed as the SPC900 will become a guide cam hopefully.

Onwards and upwards, I’m currently imaging around the crescent nebula. I was here a few weeks ago but thought I’d try again and this time I’m taking frames around the central stars to try and capture more of the nebulosity.

I’m hoping for a galaxy or 2 tonight, so I’ll be heading Northwards towards M81 and M82 as soon as I have enough Crescent frames to piece together.

Watch this space…

The camera played tricks on me again so I’ve struggled to get any images of the cresent, but have been able to stitch 2 together into a mini mosaic.