Thanks Raymo. Pretty happy with alignment for last nights shots. Used only the camera @100mm. Obviously alignment less of an issue at that focal length and managed a good 3 minutes tracking.
I played with aperture to get the spikes. I think I like 4 spikes too. I'll try another less tonight and see what I get.
How ever when I moved to the other side of the SCP (Tuc47) I was getting trails at far less than 3 minutes? No change to alignment. Which I didn't understand?
It is exactly what you said it was: The Cross. It's very nice and given the lack of nebular, galaxy or other wonderful object, the spikes on the feature stars lift it out of the ordinary.
Well done - Trevor
The greater the declination [North or South] of your target, the longer
your exposures can be without star trailing, as the apparent distance that a given object has to travel to circumnavigate the Celestial Pole [North or
South] in 24 hrs gets less.
raymo
Beautiful shot Peter, perhaps a little green in the background, or perhaps that's my monitor. I really like the spikes. Well done on a well known but seldom imaged target. If there really is green in the bg you can download the free HLVG plugin for PS or if you have pixinsight use SCNR. They both work great.
