At last after a week of sticky/hot overcast conditions friday was looking sweet for some scope time. By 4.00 had the scope set up to cool/settle down before twilight and made good on a mission list.......
1. finish polar alignment by 8.30
2. recon the Moon so as to not look a complete %ss at sat lunar club night meeting.
3.View Saturn
4.accept a impossible task ....split Siruis
5.view old friends M42,seven sisters,47tuc,omega cent,jewel box.
6.take some images of M42 and try the flame neb
finish by 11.00/Moon should be behind house to concentrate on imageing
1. take widefeild shots of omega cent ,jewel box,eta carine and LMC
2. Have a go at the deep sky activity listed in the current Sky and space {pg82}
Conditions looked fantastic at twilight , finished polar alignment on par , noted soon after a dramatic drop in temp but also noted the moisture in the air {great DEW}but seeing was pretty good . Saturn was crisp ,bands easily seen on the equator and near the pole , cassini division easily visible ...good mag range was between 180-220x suffered over that though.
As i moved onto the moon the neigbor directly in line on the other side of the street decided for the next hour to test/install new floodlights
and lebanese neigbors next door decided to play loud the Arabic top 40
The moon looked to good to get tired down with fact finding , ask questions sat night to the pros. One really good sight i saw was near a prominent crater {Copernicus i think}, two points of light coming from the shadow near the terminator , very striking ,3wish i had the LPI set up.
11pm , noted moisture collecting on nearby car , decided to take images before it got to bad.......
heres a pic of M42, conditions not good kept everything below 2 mins and tried ISO range of 800 to 1000 and a 300mm lens.....
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...n/fc92d134.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...n/35b05f4d.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...n/a25e7156.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...n/bb4936d4.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...n/b3078773.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...n/d586a306.jpg
Omega cent , Flame nebula , Jewel box, Eta carinea, LMC
With dew forming on the lens and corrector plate it was time for a hasty retreat , a brief glimpse of winter maybe ,its been a while since i had to don a jacket . Dissapointed i couldnt give the Sky and space challenge a go ,next time .
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
Piggyback focusing is driving me nuts. Well done. I bet you're pretty chuffed with the results.
