The sky was surprisingly clear in the outer North Eastern suburbs of Melbourne last night. Not wanting to set up any serious equipment with work the next day, I used an old Pentax SMC 135mm prime lens ( complete with fungus ) with my modded Canon 550d and took a combination of UVIR and CLS CCD filtered shots on a tripod with a Sightron Nano Tracker.
There's a lot of dust around in this region and I battled with a waxing moon and light pollution to extract as much detail in the Cats Paw as I could in post processing. I managed to reveal the 'Paw' but at the sacrifice of colour balance in the surrounding area.
There was also a fair bit of CA and internal filter reflections from the Clip filters for some reason with this lens. I guess after nearly forty years, it may be time to retire this lens from service!
Thanks Peter, yes, this old lens has performed well for me over the years but it seems the coatings are suffering from the ever increasing fungal infestation. I may try this area again with the apo triplet refractor, it's just finding the motivation to drag out the serious gear on these cold nights for me at the moment.
