jimness

Farewell, Sir Patrick. Sadly this news completes the trio of astronomy superheroes (with Neil Armstrong and Sir Bernard Lovell) who have departed this realm in 2012.

He will be sorely missed....but his legacy will certainly live on for many generations to come.

OK here's my first ever attempt at any sort of galaxy...good old M51, of course. Took 11 exposures of 120 secs at ISO 1600, unguided, with a Skywatcher LP filter from SE London. DSS appears to have lost any colour there may have been in stacking, but I guess this is all part of the learning process!

Next steps - sharpen up my alignment -> longer exposures -> upgrade LP filter -> autoguiding -> move to Hawaii. One thing at a time though eh chaps.

Eek, now is there an advantage to me getting one of these if I'm quick enough? I have a Neximage which I've modded to use Raw colour mode - is that basically exactly the same as the SPC880? Or is the chip slightly different? All these numbers confuse me...