Captured 90mins of this last Friday night. The clearest night we've had in Melbourne for a few weeks. The seeing wasn't great and dealing with my usual light pollution and associated gradients, made this a tough one. I'd shot this before with my Canon 550d on the 8 inch Newt but it's quite small and needs a fair crop to frame it better. Rather than cropping in post processing, why not let the camera sensor do it for me? So I used my Asi224mc and this is how it framed the shot. I do like this little planetary camera for small galaxies! The downside is trying to place the object in the middle of the sensor. I could only do a one star alignment due to all the trees around me, resulting in the GOTO not being able to place it on the sensor. I knew I had to be close, so I just slewed the scope left, right, up and down until I eventually got a glimpse of its fuzzy core. GOTCHA! By the time I had done all this, a Meridian flip had to be performed and the camera rotated 180 degrees to complete the session.
Hahah- love the commentary Mick- you’ve got to see the funny side I guess- very respectable result given the unorthodox method used. Compact framing achieved and nice resolution to boot.
Anth
Thanks Anthony and John, I'm glad I satisfied my addiction last week as it looks like another new moon cycle will be wasted due to clouds returning again here in Melbourne.
