[Dennis]

Hello,

We had a day trip planned for Bribie Island with my wife’s family, so I managed to throw the Tak mount, camera and a few lenses in the boot whilst no one was looking!

At the appointed hour, I suggested we drive to Banksia Beach where I was hoping for a wide view over the Glass House Mountains. The team agreed but to my consternation, the Sun was setting some 23 degrees S of the Glass House Mountains (we were last there in March at the Equinox!) and I had forgotten a ball and socket head to attach the camera to the mount for wide field shots. Just fitting the camera on the mount gave me badly tilted horizons, far, far worse than H0ughy’s! LOL!

Oh well, Plan B was executed which was a series of 400mm shots to be later combined in a mosaic. After fighting off the ferocious mosquitoes, I managed to salvage a few shots having polar aligned the Tak mount using a compass and home made altitude protractor. This was sufficient to allow me to shoot for 10 seconds at 400mm without any trailing.

There are 3 panes to the mosaic and I used Layers in Photoshop to enhance the back ground star field without blowing out the Moon, Venus & Jupiter.

Cheers

Dennis

PS – 1280 and 1600 Pixel versions attached