Day Dawns

The day has dawned crisp, bright and cold with only a few wisps of high level cloud. I haven't looked at the forecast yet, but I can only hope that it stays like this all day. A bit more tinkering with the images yesterday and I'm still no nearer identifying what is going on when I try to make a curves adjustment as described in the tutorial I've found. Instead of the histogram stretching as is described it breaks down into a series of lines. I've posted a question on the forums so I'll see what answer I get back.

I have authorisation to spend some money today. Yippee. I feel a new Hyperion, a moon filter and a dovetail bar at least coming my way (those Baader Microstages for afocal imaging via a Hyperion are looking tempting). These are what I emailed FLO about. Gonna have to rearrange my Maplins flight case again.

I still haven't as yet managed to snipe one of the Nexstar 60 SLT scopes and mounts from ebay, but I'm not giving up, and one day, I'll get one at the right price. Then of course, I'll have a spare Celestron 60mm refractor loitering around the house, and I'm not sure that will be too popular but hey. I'm sure it would make a reasonable guide scope for someone or maybe donate it to someone with a passing interest. Whether it can be mounted easily on anything else, now that's another question entirely. I'm not sure whether the Nexstar mounts can be used as non goto, I suspect they can, and that's fine, as I enjoy hunting objects out. The main benefit this mount will give me, is the ability to set a target and lock it, so that the mount tracks it for me. This has to be good. The goto has the added benefit, that if my eyes just can't find the object, I can select it on the mount and see how far out I was. Would this make my scope a Nexstar Vista 80s or a Vista 80sLT ? Hmm, interesting question.