First M42, first polar alignment, first track image

[Deeno]

After trolling through everything I could find on the subject of polar alignment in Iceinspace, the little eq mount with RA drive that Santa left under the tree had its first spin last night.

Using the dob with the Argo pointing at galaxy NGC2573 the eq mount was set up directly behind it and simply roughly aligned at the SCP. Nothing could be seen through the D200 and 80-200mm Ed 2.8 lens. Probably thanks to Sydney skyglow, misty skies and the near full moon.

It rained of course but, I did manage a few pics of M42 as it was close to zenith.

Shot at 80mm, this pic is the result of two shots aligned and stacked in DeepSkyStacker(downloaded today) and finale processing in ACDsee Pro.
44sec at f8 and
106sec at f2.8. Both iso 400.

Full size and cropped

The end result is nothing special and there is a long, long ,long way to go but, after fumbling away through the whole process it was encouraging to end up with something.

Thanks for looking and Mike, you may find me particularly annoying next time at Mangrove Mountain

Deeno

[iceman (Mike)]

Great start Deeno! It's a steep learning curve, but with your photography skills i'm sure you'll pick it up quickly!

[Deeno]

Thanks Mike.

Originally Posted by iceman

Great start Deeno! It's a steep learning curve, but with your photography skills i'm sure you'll pick it up quickly!

Not really. Even though I've fooled around and rattled off a lot of pics over the span of a couple of decades, I don't possess much technical knowledge and this is totally different to shooting motorcycles.
Which reminds me, what are darks and flats?

Many thanks
deeno

[Dr Nick (Nick)]

Very small and a little blurred but still good...