[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I won't go into the details here but needless to say we had a fantastic night. I spent most of the night trying out my new 50mm lens and hopping between Astro_souths 12.5" Dob and Astroron's 16" Dob. More of them elsewhere.

How did my new lens go. .....mmmmm....soso. For a cheap achro lens I suppose its not too bad. Terrible field curvature near the edges even stopped down a stop. May be better stopped down two stops. Fairly obvious chromatic aberation. Cheap and probably a good starters lens.

Anyway....lots of wide field shots taken Under excellent transparency, seeing only mediocre at around 3-4 out of ten. Wind was gusting quite a bit towards the end

. All at ISO400 at 240 sec. Anywhere from 3 to 8 shots per final image. Generally played with the stacking method using Registax, Imagestacker and PS. Most dark subtracted. Levels and cropping only in PS.

1. My first ever spotting of Andromeda Galaxy. Two shots only stacked in Registaxs and levelled and cropped in PS 50mm lens +2X teleconverter

2.Tail of Scorpio. 50 mm lens Various combinations of stacking methods and levelled and cropped in PS.

3. NGC253 and friends (NGC247 on the left and NGC288 below right). Widefield with 50mm Stacked in Registax and levelled and cropped in PS

4. Widefield Omega Cent. 50 mm and Levelled in PS (uncropped)

5. SMC and 47 TUC, Registax and Imagestacker. 50mm Levels and crop in PS

6. Coalsack and dark lanes. full wide field no cropping, best image for lack field curvature. 50mm Stacked in Registax levels in PS

7. 50mm + 2X teleconverter - Omega again (cropped)