M81
Having so many features to operate the telescope, I decided not to take the CPC
11 out on Thursday evening. Instead I took the Orion 80ED and the Vixen mount
out to do some imaging. Not having used it since November of 07, I initially
left out one of the setup procedures. (Hehehe). Realizing that every object I
went to did not fit in the eyepiece, I did the setup all over again with the
weight and telescope attached (normally a no-no). But after redoing the
alignment the mount and scope worked flawlessly, all objects near the center of the
eyepiece.
I proceeded to move to M81, attached the ccd camera and took 62 one minute
images, combined these images in CCDSTACK with slight processing in Photoshop. The
attached image is the results. Hope you like it.
I wanted to go out and image another hour to add to Thursdays imaging but I was
just too tired.
Gene (may be going to NEAF)
Astronomy mag POD
on Tue, 04/29/2008 - 9:38pm
Congrats on "A spiral in the Great Bear" Pic of the Day
Looking for stars
on Sat, 04/19/2008 - 8:19pm
Ha!
Had similar experience. Turned on the scope after a long break in imaging ( last Nov I think).
I Updated some software - theSky, MaximCCD and the ubiquitous obnoxious Windows Updates ( way too many of them) and finally pointed to a bright star, Surprise
No way the star on my chip was the star I pointed to. So I tried manually to find a Very bright star - Sirius. After 2-3 hours I gave up. I just could not put it on my chip. Fast forward on theSky to see if the moon will show up. It did around midnight.
Wow I was way off. Found the moon and sync on it. After that everything fell on my chip. Did a "Short Mapping Run" on TPoint and now ready for new old targets. Who knows when, ...cloudy tonight.