Hello everyone!
Well after a little hiatus, I've dragged the scope out to try out my bodgied webcam. Why tonight? Well the moon is nice and big and it gave me a nice bright object to aim my guidescope at, to which the webcam was attached.
Well what do you know, the Logitech webcam managed to not only pick up the Moon but it gave a fairly good picture. However this was not my goal for tonight. My goal was to guide using a star.
So off I went looking for a bright star to try the webcam on. Unfortunately for me, only the brightest of stars were picked up by the webcam. I tried in and about M8 & M22 but there was nothing bright enough to use as a guide star. Undeterred, I moved the scope (via my laptop using Stellarium and the nifty little usb gamepad from Honkers - I love it when a plan comes together!) to a bright star. I pointed the scope at Antares.
After much fiddling I managed to get a bright dot in the PHD window. It was Antares. Very excited I was!! OK, now to try autoguiding my scope using PHD. Attempt one at guiding - not very good. Attempt 2 - not very good. Attempts 3, 4,5 & 6 - not very good...... Attempt 137 - my god, it's working!
OK, so I get my camera and take 5, roughly 2 minute exposures (a total of 8mins, 55 secs) at ISO 800 as well as one dark sub. I race inside, load the shots on to the computer, use DSS to stack, then PS to post-process quickly, Then I type this message, add the photo and low and behold, I present to you, my peers on IIS, my first ever autoguided image!!! (But it's just Antares - I know!)
Cheers,
Mario
PS Now all I have to do is convince the finance department that I need to buy a QHY5.....
