Another night goes by

Here we are again. Another night has gone by under a heavy layer of cloud. The patina of light patterns on the underside of the cloud layer was almost pretty, patches of yellow and white, interspersed in the overall glare from the floodlights at the local football pitch. Couldn't be bothered trying to photo it to be honest, I don't think it would have worked anyway.

So I spent the evening, by the puter, working on my image processing. I must say, that I do seem to be getting better at it, learning my way around Elements whilst I'm at it. I redid my Perseus shot and I've pulled more information up out of the original and it looks like you can even see the Alpha Persei (Mirphak) association now. This was done with tweaking levels and curves (possibly, it's not labeled that as far as I can tell) and sharpneing and using noiseware (superb bit of software) to remove the extra noise created in the image. Here's the results:



Onto the mount question. I've ordered a second hand set of tube rings so that I can mount the scope on top. I'll still need a dovetail, probably quite long to balance the scope on an eq mount, so this might need a hole or two drilling to fit the tube rings but we'll see. I think I'm gonna go with the Skywatcher EQ2 mount rather than the Seben. The man with the Seben hasn't responded on my extra questions, and I know that the Skywatcher mount is at least a known quantity.

The Baader Hyperion should arrive in the post this morning, almost guaranteed to drum up some clouds of course, although at the moment the sun is shining. I can but hope.