2012 JanuaryTŷ Du Observatory

We’ve had a couple of clear nights between the end of last week and last night, but I think it’s all change now for at least for the rest of this week. This blog is more like a weather forecast sometimes, maybe I should get a weather station to keep an accurate record …

With the trees bare I now have good views south and sweeping around through the east to the north east. The view is blocked at lower levels by houses to the east and next door’s shed to the north but can’t grumble

Given this view and this time of year I’ve been trying to get to grips with CDC (Cartes du Ciel) to locate deep-sky objects that may be of interest. The obvious and probably favourite of most amateurs M42 the Orion Nebula is currently perfectly positioned in the early evening but crosses the meridian as the night progresses and as this would require some setting up I tend to move on to other objects.

I think I’ll change the format of this blog at some point as I’m starting to take multiple shots of the same objects which could now have pages of their own.

Comparing my efforts with “Google Images” it seems I still have plenty of room for improvement!

I’m not the most patient of people so taking long exposures drives me crazy but over the last few nights I did manage to get 2 x 20 minute guided exposures of M45 (The Pleiades). A misted primary made the images look a little out of focus, I even found frost on the secondary so under those conditions anything was a bonus. But still 20 mins is a lot of photons so hopefully this bodes well for the future.

Oh yes, VIGNETTING is starting to become an issue. Is the focus tube extending too far towards the secondary? maybe, maybe I need to get to the bottom of it or find a good way to remove it in the processing.

So over the last few days I’ve taken these shots:

2012-01-12: