[Dennis]

Hello,

The second outing with the canon 40D was marred by cloud bands constantly rolling in from the SE.

In between sets of clouds I managed to squeeze in a single 5 minute shot of the Jewel Box and a prime focus shot of the Moon.

I then turned to M42 again and tried to make sure my exposure time was equal to the clear patches between the sets, so the ICNR was performed during the cloudy spells. Nature wasn’t being very co-operative; the sets that rolled had differing wavelengths and frequencies so I couldn’t predict the clear patches accurately and therefore had to expose on the fly.

This restricted the exposures to between 60 secs and 180 secs so I couldn’t go as deep as I would have liked. Also, the camera orientation was altered to prevent a grub screw from fouling the penta prism, so I couldn’t re-use the previous evening’s data.

Here is M42 made up from 10x30 sec and 4x180 sec exposures.

Tak Mewlon 180 F12 at prime focus (2160mm).

Cheers

Dennis