Jupiter and the Pleiades

[chiralchemist]

After months of putting together the (budget) equipment I needed, here's my first attempt at producing a 'tracked' image with my CG-3 mount. Jupiter is down at the bottom of the image with the Pleiades directly above.

Took ages to get it drfit-aligned, then longer still to work out that the motor I bought only tracked when switched to southern hemisphere mode. I had no idea Sheffield had moved south of the equator! The result is a stack of 10 images (with the usual lights, darks, etc) on a Canon 1100D, 50mm f 1.4 lens @ f 2.4, 20 second exposure, ISO 800. This is only a slight improvement on the 10 seconds that I could get without engaging the motor and could have gone for longer, but would have needed to re-align and fiddle with the motor a little longer, and was frozen by this point. Final bit of tweaking to get rid of pesky light pollution in GIMP.

Quite pleased with this as a first attempt, although not had a good night since to try it all again! I was even more pleased when I spotted an most identical image (albeit better than mine....) in this month's Sky at Night magazine.

It has taught me to start saving pennies to get a better mount!

[scoobee]

liking your image, as for your first attempt a very good effort you should be well pleased

[stellawolf]

Very nice first attempt well done