Some Lunar shots and not the Leo Triplet

Saturday was back to normal, with a cloudy day. As the evening set in, it started to clear, leaving some thin, high level mist lurking. I took the opportunity, put the C80ED onto a camera tripod and used my camera and a 2xTC to grab some shots.



I took about 17 in total, and had a go at a stack. I used DSS (not ideal) to stack them. Registax 4 throws a fit at the 450d frames, and Registax 5, being a beta, also threw an error. I didn't have time to work that out. Anyway, I tried a few passes of high pass filter sharpening on it.



A little later on, and the mist had cleared, so I carted out the HEQ5, setup, polar aligned, I'm still surprised quite how easy this really is. As Leo was riding nice and high I thought I'd have a go at the Leo Triplet, a group of three galaxies in the belly of the Lion (ooh, I like that...). Anyway, after using Saturn to get focus, the usual liveview at 10x, I slewed around to about the right spot. Then spent the next 35 minutes trying to find them. I even used the 24x80 finder scope thingy I have mounted (my Konus and a 17mm Hyperion) but no joy. In the end, I fired a test frame and went looking for fuzzies. Yep, got one, centre of the frame. Hurray, thought I, set the timer remote and let it go to work. I'd set for 90x2.5 minute exposures... but after only about 90 minutes, the skies clouded over. I didn't get time to observe with the bins whilst the scope was doing it's stuff, mores the pity. I got a total of 36 frames @ISO1600, stacked in DSS with darks, flats and flat darks, then stretched in PS, for some reason, the DSS adjustments didn't seem to work so well.

Anyway, my Leo triplet image



It turns out, that whilst I've got 3 faint fuzzies on here, they are the wrong 3 faint fuzzies, and therefore not the triplet I was aiming for. This is M95 and M96 (much harder targets than M65 and M66 that I'd been wanting). The real triplet is a little ways off the right of the frame. Oh well. Next time. I'll also come back to this pair once I've sorted guiding out and can spend a lot longer on each frame.

Which should have turned out to be the following night, but my back was really hurting and I didn't feel up to carting the gear out. Instead I put the C80ED on a camera tripod again and grabbed a couple of shots of the moon.

The normal orientation



and I decided to try a portrait version as well.




A real shame about last night, the sky was so clear, but there'll be plenty more.