Weekend Moons and more time

Saturday had a few moments early evening, when the moon poked here nose through the clouds. The thin sliver of a two day old moon was lovely. I got a couple of shots using the Skymax 102 on a camera tripod



I thought I'd see what a different orientation would look like



I then removed the Skymax and setup with the 55-250 to capture some Earthshine, whilst the moon was cradled in the trees.



That was that, the clouds then covered everything.

Sunday was a reasonably nice day, but cloudy, however, by the time evening came around, the skies had cleared. I had another pop with the Skymax at the moon, the sky was light enough, I was able to get some blue.



The evening wore on, and thanks to the clock changes it took, what seemed forever to get dark. By 9pm, the last clouds had gone and the sky was dark, and crystal clear. I got out the gear, levelled, polar aligned, and went hunting for Bodes and the Cigar galaxy to add some more time.

After faffing for an hour, trying to locate them, and eating through my power pack, I'd had enough, I just couldn't work out the right position. So I popped the 17mm Hyperion in the Konus and used my 24x80 finder scope. After only a moment, both patches of grey were visible. This is the first time I've seen them both in a scope, quite an amazing sight, even if all I could see was a faint, couple of pale grey smudges.

Finally, having managed to find them, I setup for 3 minute exposures and set the gear capturing. By the time the powertank ran out, I'd managed only 34 subs, if only I'd managed this earlier, I'd have got 45 or 50... Ho hum. I grabbed darks and flats, and set the stack running, combining all the data from this and the previous session on the 18th. A bit of processing in PS and here's the result



I'm really pleased with the results, there's even a hint of red beginning to show on the cigar.