IC 2118 - Another Witch

[Mickoid]

No pixel peeping here please! High ISO, unguided and taken through a 40 year old Sun branded 200mm lens. I had a chance to go camping and fishing in Victoria's NE last weekend under Bortle 2 skies so that night while the campfire was glowing I set up an old HEQ5 mount (non GOTO) and shot 102 X 60 sec subs using a stock standard Canon 550d. As mentioned, I used an old lens I got off Gumtree for $80 and made an external aperture out of the plastic lid from a tennis ball container which fitted perfectly over the front of the lens. I had cut a hole ( obviously not very well, looking at the diffraction spikes on bright stars! ) to about f5 to tame the CA and edge aberrations.

So here's the result of just over one and a half hours at 3200 iso. Somewhat boring compared to Stefan's masterpiece but this being the more familiar view! :)

[strongmanmike]

Not boring at all, that's a fine image and I liked the story behind its capture too, always nice to hear to accompany an image like this, cool :thumbsup:

Mike

[Mickoid]

Thanks for your encouraging words Mike. Love to see what you could produce on this object from your new high altitude observatory! It would be real :eyepop: stuff, I would imagine.

[Bassnut]

Unguided! . Also given the gear thats exceptional. Zooming in was fine ;)

[Startrek]

Excellent image from your remote location with a basic set up
Well done indeed !!
By the way, did you catch anything ?

Cheers
Martin

[Mickoid]

Thanks Martin, sure was basic. Dew was becoming a problem later in the night. I ended up waving my hand vigorously over the front of the lens every so often to create a draught of air to evaporate the condensation and pausing the exposure to do so. Surprisingly that worked but wasted a fair bit of valuable exposure time. Let's not talk about the fishing other than saying I let the fish live another day!


Glad you liked it Fred, not much I used for this shot was less than 10 years old, which goes to show there's life left in older gear that can still produce a reasonable image.

[Anth10]

Good to see you ‘bag’ some great shots Mick! Pitty you couldn’t bag some fishies though, hehehe.

[rustigsmed]

great job Mickoid!