Mixed Bag

[Mickoid]

With showers and cloud forecast for Melbourne over the New Moon weekend, I studied the cloud forecast apps to see if anywhere in Victoria might give me a chance to set up my gear and take some shots. 2 out of the 3 forecast models showed a reasonable chance over North East Victoria on Saturday night. So I booked some accommodation to stay overnight in 'Kelly Country".

I started with M104 at about 8.00pm with a strong breeze causing me to reduce my unguided exposures to 1 minute and even then I only kept 35 out of 60. At least I passed! :lol: So I ended up with 35 minutes at 1600iso using a Canon 550d on a f5 8 inch Newt mounted on a HEQ5pro.

That was enough to make me give up with the long focal length and turn to using the camera for widefield. The first two are on a Sightron Nano Tracker, Crux and Carina with a Samyang 14mm lens, 8 x 90 seconds 1600iso. Scorpio was 10 x 90 seconds, Canon 50mm lens 1600iso.

I finished the night off with 2 x 5 min subs of the Sagittarius region with the 50mm lens stopped down to f8 on the HEQ5pro mount. Of course, Jupiter makes a special appearance in that region. By then it was about 1.00am and the cold had got to me so despite the wind dropping significantly, I decided to pack it all away back in the car.

[strongmanmike]

Great bag of shots there Michael from a nicely planned expedition, well done :thumbsup:

Mike

[Anth10]

Nice assortment Mick! I like the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex in particular. Well done - top effort all round.

Anth

[multiweb]

I like the wide fields. Cool shot with jup photo bomb in the middle. :thumbsup:

[ChrisV]

Nice. I also really like the Rho Orph complex
Edit - the sombrero ain't too shabby either

[Mickoid]

Thanks Mike, the effort payed off this time, I left the showers behind and once over the Great Divide, the clouds started to thin out and let the sunshine through. Boy, what a difference a dark sky makes, apart from trying to find Octans! ;)


Thanks Anthony, as always, I should have taken more subs but the 10 I took still brought out lots of detail under the dark skies.

Thanks Marc, yes Jupiter overpowers the shot to a certain extent. I actually had to remove lens flare from it, like I was shooting straight into the sun.
Wide fields are fun to hunt out the objects you normally take through your telescope. It puts them in perspective.
Glad you liked them Chris, had the seeing been better I think M104 would have shown more detail but you can't expect too much from using an 8 inch Newt and a DSLR on it.

[codemonkey]

I'm diggin' them wide fields, Michael. Nice work.

As for an 8" newt, you can get some pretty good results with them when the stars align