Four galaxies by manual tracking - first shot!

[Sam Bo]

Hi all

Recently purchased an illuminated eyepiece reticle to try out manual tracking of Nikon dslr with 200mm lens f4 piggybacked to a Bresser Skylux on an EQ3-2.

Took about 20 x 40-60 sec exposures whilst slowly turning the RA. Was too cold to take much more!

Stacked in DSS with darks and cropped x 4

First attempt at DSOs and very pleased to have caught four galaxies M81, M82, 3077 and 2976 I think?

Pleased that I will be purchasing a motorised EQ5 soon though!!

[Pete Presland]

a great effort worthy of praise indeed, dont think i have seen a manually tracked image with 4 galaxies in it before.i found it a pain manually tracking a planet with a webcam, so i take my hat off to you a superb image

[Schorhr]

Really nice! I really have to try that one of these days with the Skylux mount and DSLR.

[Sam Bo]

Thanks for your comments!!!

Am going to attempt the Coma Berenices region sometime this week hopefully. See if the manual method can catch more than 4 galaxies...

[sologuitarist61]

Very nice image and well done on the tracking!