Interesting night

[beren]

Like Paul i experimented with autoguiding last night using Guidedog and K3CCDtools and delving into their features , got into it so much that from 6.00pm Sat to 4.30 this morning the time just seemed to fly . I mostly wanted to freehand going through all through the settings without going into all the manuals so i didnt achieve much in the way of images but it was a lot of fun and a tad frustrating { }, you really do get to appreciate more fully the efforts of others in producing fine images.
Used K3ccdtools to help with drift aligning first up and i did a reset on the lx to default settings to get a PEC error readout using the drift explorer feature , after about 10 minutes there was a peak to peak RA pec error of 15arc sec. Moved on to the tricky aligning of a guide star while centring a target and then getting the Meade LPI settings right to pick up the target star , used Guidedog for this . Did some trials using the LX as the guiding scope and the Orion ED as the imager, got a lot of fine tuning to do but i was happy with some results eg: 15min one exposures of swan/Lagoon

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...0002Medium.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...0001Medium.jpg

Sky conditions were very strange last night , no clouds but the whole 360 degree horizon had a weird red tinge illumination and skyglow was bad , trying to get a decent Mars image later in the evening was next to impossible and some others like the Helix nebula arnt worth displaying . I really wanted to get a NGC253 image but halfway through the shot the battery for the D70 ran dry but managed to get this noise infested shot

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1..._0007Small.jpg

[Dennis]

Nice work Beren - seems you enjoyed yourself too!

Cheers

Dennis

[atalas]

It's nice to see things coming together for you Beren ! good work mate you got some good detail.

Louie

[Mick (Michael)]

Way to go Stuart, nice images.

[beren]

Thanks Louie/Dennis/Mick.....yeah Dennis it was exciting to get all this gear up and running , i didnt want stress to much about getting everything right but just enjoy the experiance....wanted to do heaps like explore the regions decribed in August S&t of Lacailles Telescopium and get some widefield galaxy shots using the Orion ED plus i wanted to track down Pluto and record movement etc, great to see Mars again although blurry i could just make out a v dark markings on a gibbous disk....ahhh not enough time

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Sounds like you had fun Stuart. Excellent. I'll be interested in your impressions of using K3 with the LX200 after you've had a chance to get comfortable with the combination. What were your details on 253?

[davidpretorius]

my wife and i are in melbourne airport, drinking a coffee and a crown lager. my lovely wife (she is sitting next to me, and watching me type) commented how nice the shots of the "swirley" one looked.

"swirley" is an astronomical term (remember she is siiting next to me)

[beren]

LOL David my wife uses the same descriptive techniques ....well i needed a bit of coffee last night but a crownie would be sweet now ....
Paul i had trouble getting a decent star to track through the LPI/guidedog combo with the NGC253 shot so it was unguided for 5 min through the Orion ,i was unlucky the battery dried ,its a bright target

[iceman (Mike)]

Really nice Stuart, excellent results!

[Striker (Tony)]

Good stuff Stuart........

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

looking good for sure

[beren]

Cheers.....tried again last night,its pretty difficult having the SCT acting as the guider with trying to find suitable stars to guide with through guidedog using the LPI, be interesting to see if its easier with a reverse setup....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1..._0005Small.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1..._0006Small.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1..._0003Small.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1..._0001Small.jpg