A clear night

On Sunday I had a clear night that didn't have a full or nearly full moon riding high in the sky, rather a new crescent moon, and I got a couple of shots of it.

A crescent showing Earthshine, I managed to get a star in this one too, although it's quite hard to see (HP 106739, Mag 7). This was shot at 600mm with the 450d through the C80ED on my redsnapper. To be honest, I'm rather amazed the moon didn't turn into a smear, as it was quite a long exposure, but ...



And then, just the crescent at 1200mm with the 2xTC fitted too


Amazingly, the sky stayed clear of clouds, and some time later I was able to get the entire rig out. I decided to try something a little different and piggy backed the camera to the C80ED, using the Canon 50mm lens. Balance was a little tricky and I had to add the second counterweight, but once done, it worked. I'd previously made a small dew shield for the lens, but found, when firing some test shots that it was too long, so carried out some surgery on it with a pair of scissors so all's good there. Got everything lined up, set the guiding going, and the camera capturing. After 15 minutes, some odd things were going on... the mount was tracking, but the camera was stuck on a not quite blank screen... ah, I know what that is... that's the battery.. what flat already... quick change... then went to check on the guiding status. The laptop had gone into a suspend state. So I bought it back out of suspend mode, and used mains power instead. That solved that one. But PHD and EQMOD were both messed up. So start all over again.

This time all worked perfectly. And I went about capturing a sequence of 5 minute exposures.

I selected ISO200 to test out exactly what effect this would have, expecting to pick up less data. I was amazed to discover that this wasn't the case. And in fact, it's probably my best result to date.

Anyway... the image..
ISO200, 33 x 5 Minutes @ 50mm, f/3.5
Mounted on the HEQ5, guided with PHD and the QHY5v on the Vista 80s
The camera has not been modified for Ha sensitivity



Click for bigger.

I enjoyed that, and I want to have a go at Auriga next.