[Mickoid (Michael)]

I've been very impressed with this little Nano Tracker I purchased several weeks back but have had little chance with the weather recently to really give it a good go.

After a couple of goes at making polar alignment a bit easier, I have come up with an adapted guide scope which I can attach to my tripod (see photo). The scope works better than the small sight hole that is built into the tracker but it is still hit and miss to a certain degree.

Saturday night was supposed to be clear with a near quarter moon until about 3.00am or so but of course Murphy's Law came into play and by the time I had set my rig up I could see clouds building up to the west.

Sure enough I ended up shooting these shots through high cloud until it thickened up too much and I packed everything away.

I thought I would have a go at M31 and I had to wait until it rose above the horizon, which isn't very high from Victoria and I couldn't wait for it's maximum elevation because thickening cloud was approaching. However I managed to shoot it through thin cloud before it was hidden completely.

Tarantula and the Pleiades were just shots in desperation. Exposure details were:

M31: 15 X 30 secs @ 3200iso 500mm f8 Modded Canon 550d
Tarantula Nebula: 8 X 30 secs @ 3200iso 500mm f8 Modded Canon 550d
Pleiades: 17 X 30 secs @ 6400iso 250mm f5.6 Unmodded Canon 550d.
Tracker with guide scope: 1 X 1/200 sec w/flash @ 400iso 55mm f5.6 Unmodded Canon 550d (he, he!)