Thanks everyone
While I remember, this is also the area where Mars has its near miss with Comet Siding Spring in October, just below the bowl of the Pipe. For those with clear skies, that'll be a superb photo opportunity with the Pipe and Snake in the background, and no moon to worry about.
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Originally Posted by smader
Great effort with the tracker! Did you spend long polar aligning?
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Thanks a lot Stacy! I've quite enjoyed using it, but it is slowly tempting me into going more advanced... and that's a dangerously deep rabbithole. I find polar aligning really very easy with the Skytracker. It helps that my old tripod happens to have a rotating turntable on the head, so that I don't have to rely on the Skytracker's azimuth control - but a combination of levelling it, locating the trapezoid asterism containing Sigma Octans, using the PolarFinder app to position Sigma Oct on the reticle - seems to work really effectively for me. From arriving at my observing site, it rarely takes me more than 5-10mins absolute max to have the mount aligned. And then the polar alignment drift errors are significantly smaller than the periodic error, which is the main limiter on my exposure lengths.
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Originally Posted by RickS
Very nice, Andy! I saw that region described as the Galactic Kiwi the other day and that's all I can see now when I look at it |
I saw that description too, it is awfully easy to see now!
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Originally Posted by Camelopardalis
Beautiful Andy! So much contrast between the pipe and the surrounding star field  |
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Originally Posted by Regulus
A nice photo of the region Andy with satisfying contrast.
Trev
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The rich background does provide for great contrast with the dust, it's lovely. But if you want to feel very small,
have a look at ESO's rendition of the mouthpiece of the Pipe, especially the zoomable 15,000 x 15,000 pixel version, where the merest smudges in my picture are resolved into thousands of stars...
