A very clear night tonight but British Summer Time means I have to wait another hour before I can setup! It was after 8pm before I could polar align on Polaris so only a few hours of imaging, but I did manage to get a couple more M’s for my Messier Catalogue (M95 and M105).
 M1 The Crab Nebula |
 M38 Open Cluster |
 M95 – Barred Spiral Galaxy |
Although there was some broken cloud around, I still managed a couple of hours of viewing. Not much to show as a stiff breeze made most frames unusable.
 M3 Globular Cluster 66×8 Seconds |
 M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy 9 x 60 Seconds |
 M109 Barred Spiral 9 x 40 Seconds |
I’ve been glad of the cloud cover, it gave me a chance to catch up on my sleep! Last night was unexpectedly clear and I set everything up while cooking dinner. My first target was NGC2403 a galaxy in Camelopardalis which I’ve targetted before as it’s a bright galaxy near the northern meridian. Being so far north reduces the Periodic Error (PE) as the motors don’t have to move the mount as much as when it point’s east or west. I still need to adjust the gear mesh again as I’m sure that carrying the mount in and out of the house puts a strain on the bearings.
After 2403 I stayed roughly in the Ursa Major constellation and managed to image M82 and M101 both galaxies from the Messier catalogue (M101 needs reprocessing as this image doesn’t look like the original). I then moved on to NGC6939 an open cluster in Cepheus before finally catching the M3 Globular Cluster in Canes Venatici. With work only hours away I retired to my bed and left the processing for later.
 NGC2403 in Camelopardalis 39×60 seconds |
 M82 in Ursa Major 15×60 seconds |
 M101 in Ursa Major 10×50 seconds |
 NGC6939 in Cepheus 7×40 seconds |
 M3 in Canes Venatici 14×30 seconds |
Did you notice the images are upside-down? When I move east of the meridian the mount rotates so that images appear inverted. Maybe I’ll correct this before posting in future.
Just a couple of images tonight, I had trouble with the mount moving east-west causing the stars to elongate. The fix is to take shorter exposures, so after trying some of the fainter objects I moved around to the brighter nebulae and Galaxies.
What a week! I had 5 straight clear nights, not much sleep but some great viewing. My PC must have been overworked with all the processing and Thursday morning it gave up completly with a pop and smell of burning. The replacement arrived midday Friday and although I missed Friday evening I was back imaging by Saturday.
Now I have to re-install everything and that has led to an issue. K3CCDTools which I’ve used exclusively for processing FIT images requires a key which is linked to the PC. I’ve written to Peter Katreniak for a replacement registration code but I have so many images to process I’ve had to make a start with Registax.
(Received the reg code and started processing straight away – thanks Peter).
So these first images may need revisiting in the future, but for now I’ve done some quick processing.
Last evening turned into a Messier Marathon with me tackling 14 “M’s” mostly in and around Ursa Major. The purpose for me was to get an idea of what they look like so that I can target them properly, if they are within the limits of my equipment, on the next clear night.
So here they are:
 M63 – Canes Venatici |
 M51 in Ursa Major |
 M3 in Canes Venatici |
There are more to follow, but as with M109 (above) I suffered from misting and also from dust doughnuts and twice had to clean the CCD cover during the session. I have just returned from the local camera shop where I’ve purchased a lens cleaning cloth and a puffer brush which should make removing dust a little easier.
All images taken with Atik 16ic, 254mm (10″) Newtonian Scope on EQ6 Pro mount with EQMOD. Stacked and stretched in Registax.