Well it has been a while. Partly this is due to other new equipment that I have been 'getting to grips with'. Partly it is due to the frustration I was beginning to feel with the ccd and the seeming impossibility of me ever getting anything half-way decent.

Anyway, I decided that last night would be an opportunity to have another go. Used the 6SE, as I wanted to image NGC 3242 (the ghost of Jupiter) before it completely disappears into the twilight for another year. Nice and bright, so thought it would not be a problem.

First problem was the tracking. Because of the smaller fov, I found that, despite it being a better alt-az mount than the slt, fewer of the frames I took (which were only 15-second subs) were useable [due to trailing]; only 56/144. Well, 56 is better than none.

However, when I put them in DSS, it told me that there were not enough stars to align and only one sub would be stacked. This is spite of the presence of at least a dozen quite bright stars. I tried numerous combinations, but could not get DSS to stack any more than one sub.

Anyway, the result is attached. Horribly noisy, but this is hardly surpising in the circumstances. And even though it is only 15s data, the outer shell, inner structure and central star are all visible. So I suppose it could have been worse. And, in fairness, the problems I have had with it are due to the mount and DSS rather than getting to grips with the camera. So not too despondent.