I know that you are not supposed to be imaging DSOs when there is a nearly full moon but when you have a new scope (a C8N), camera (Canon 300D), and you have had two clear nights snce you acquired the new gear two months ago, its hard not to try despite the brilliance of a nearly full moon.
last night was clear after what seemed an eternity , it was the night before the Easter weekend, so I had to give it a go. Tried guiding for the first time ever.
I mounted my 60 mm department store scope piggy back on my C8 and with my Atik 1 c plugged in, used this to manually guide the rig, after a rough polar alignment. (no drift alignment)
soon I discovered I didnt have the dexterity to manually guide an Equatorial mount- but my teenage son -(all those hours playing video games came in handy)-he had no trouble- after a little training -keeping alignment with the hand control- and was persuaded to hand guide the mount
this is one single 5 minute exposure at ISO 800..it got a bit washed out by sky glow but that was fixed by adjusting the blackpoint in Photoshop, and a liitle bit of processing
The framing could have been better but was determined more by the availability of a guide star
the result appears promising-am looking forward to what this arrangement can achieve when there is no moon
Realised after it was too late that I had imaged in medium resolution not high ..yet another operator error
