Can’t buy a clear sky.
I think I can count on one hand the number of clear nights we have had since mid-November. Several of those were during periods of a full moon which make deep sky photography nearly impossible, and aren’t great for photographing the moon. Last night they were forecasting clear skies so we took the chance and set up all the gear. Along about 7pm the clouds began to roll in. I held my ground hoping things would clear out just as fast. A bit of luck ensued as darkness fell. A quick polar alignment and a 3 point star alignment and we we off to the races. Well, for about a half hour anyway then the clouds rolled back in ending our brief night of imaging. All in all it was good practice setting things up and learning to run the mount from EQMOD. I’m sure we’ll have many clear nights this spring and summer.
This image below (click on it for a larger version) is the result of only 6 minutes of exposure data of M42 “The Orion Nebula. You can begin to see the “Running Man Nebula” Shot at prime focus with a Canon 80D camera using iso800 and 90sec exposures. The scope is a SkyWatcher P120mm ED APO 900mm f/7.5 I used a Tele Vue .8 reducer / flattener making the scope a 720mm f/6 lens. Post processing was done in Adobe LR and PhotoShop CC 2017
Over all I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out given the extremely small amount of data collected. I’m really looking forward to getting the chance put some serious time in with this set-up. As always feel free to comment, we love hearing what you think!
Tony