torsdag 18. september 2014

A sky full of stars

Last night there was a clear sky, so I wanted to do some astrophoto. At least for the hours the weather forecasters predicted would be clear. So I set up my scope and spent the better part of an hour setting up the polar alignment. I got it pretty good at the end. Then I set up the autoguider, and set the telescope for 3 hours of exposures on M27. When I came this morning to check on progress, I found my laptop had died due to lack of juice (I had actually forgotten to switch on the power from the outlet, so it ran on battery only...). And when I checked the camera, I had not pressed the plug in properly, so the last 10 or so exposures were obviously just due to a wiggly connection, so they varied between 1/33th of a second to 7 seconds. In total, I got 15 exposures of 5 minutes each. They had, on the other hand, very good guiding on them. Round, sharp stars. So, with only 1 hour 15 minutes of exposure. What can I do. Well. Not as much as I had hoped, but I did get something out of it. And I decided to upload almost the whole frame. I love the view of all the stars in the Milkyway. And then, M27 in the middle of the myriad of stars. The universe is truly beautiful!
Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO400, 15x5 minutes, William Optics FLT98 CF w/ WO AFR-IV flattener/reducer (F/5), on Celestron AVX mount. Guided with QHY5II & PHD2. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and IrfanView.


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