Thursday, 13 August 2015

The Eagle and its dim relation

Another bonus night, or sort of anyway. The sky cleared around 8, so I set up, hoping to image NGC 678, a low surface brightness planetary in Aquila. Once the scope is set up, before I take any subs, I do a longer exposure to check that it is tracking accurately. Tonight, the target was Altair. This is the result of a single 107 second (unguided) exposure:


Not too shabby at all!

The target was close to Altair, within a few seconds, so I used Altair as the sync star. I planned on taking 90 plus 45 second subs, but sadly after about 40 minutes, the clouds rolled over. after getting rid of the worst, DSS stacked 27 to give me this:




Again, not too shabby considering!

On the equipment front, I am now considering:

1. Skywatcher Synguider Autoguider - seems ot be ok for most users, need a 80 mm guidescope (got that), plus the main thing is it does not need a laptop, just a powersupply (batteries at a push)
2. A set of Televue Plossls (25, 15, 11, maybe a 35)

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