Another evening with the 6SE.

One of the difficulties I have had is in getting objects anywhere near focus - there are fewer stars in the field and when they are out of focus they seem to be WAY out of focus, so decided to have some fun with Vega, which is bright enough to appear on the screen anyway. Discovered that I need to give the focus knob three 'rotates' to the left (from my 32mm e/p) when it is just the CCD.

Maybe I should explain that a 'rotate' is, I would guess, about 60 degrees. It involves grabbing the focus knob with index finger and thumb, with the thumb in the (sort of) 10 o'clock position and rotating it a 'comfortable distance'. In some respects this is a very arbitrary amount, but experience has taught me that these turns tend to be about the same each time, so that is what I use.

Anyway, having got the camera focussed on Vega I GOTO'd M57, and fine-focussed on one of the fainter stars there. I then proceeded to get about 45 min data (15 second subs). The resulting image is attached, and I am reasonably happy with it.

When I get another clear night I intend to try and get some colour to add to it. Might do this using the bin2x2 function, as I have read elsewhere in the forum that that is ok for adding colour. Will have to do a bit of research before making that decision. Will also be interesting to see if I can get everything lined up using data from a second night.