M97 Owl with M108 Surfboard - 1st effort

[Tommohawk]

Friday 21^st March.

Weather forecast showed a clear spell for a few hours, so got set up in a big rush, (the usual fight with polar alignment) and then the cloud set in. Went in for swift dinner... 10 mins later cloud cleared. Got focussed up – objective Orion nebula before it gets too low – then more cloud. Go indoors for brief sulk, then return to find cloud cleared. Camera attached, and then find camera battery gone flat.

Indoors for longer sulk and charge battery. Hour and a half later sky clear again, but M42 gone. Nice view of plough, so had a quick scan for M97 Owl nebula. And to my surprise found it – much dimmer than expected. I have no idea how Messier found this – and I haven’t started looking for the dimmer ones yet.

Battery recharged so whizz out again and get hooked up. Previous efforts focusing on M82 were complicated by the fact that there were no stars bright enough to see in the Liveview viewfinder. Fortunately on this occasion there was one which was bright enough to show, so focussed with lovely new 2 speed Lacerta conversion (very nice, thanks Neill!)

Cloud intermittent, family watching high octane movie with much flashing light escaping through the blinds, but managed some half decent subs. Also got M108 Surfboard by complete fluke, though some coma as a result of being off centre. (Messier was certainly ahead of his time if he knew about surfboards)

To be precise, in case anyone’s interested: 14 lights at 100 seconds ISO 800, 6 darks, 10 offset. Didn’t bother with flats as thought the whole effort was a bit 2^nd rate. Discarded about 15 lights with blurring due to backlash/jerky mount. Result not too bad I thought given the limitations.

PS. Saturday 22^nd March.

Crystal clear skies.... but I’ve fixed up rare night out. More sulking.

[Leveye]

Real nice work!

[wxsatuser]

It's a tough one, so not to bad.

[Tommohawk]

Thanks. I was pleased given its pretty much budget equipment. For these smaller faint fuzzies, I wonder if I might do better with a good Barlow, and up the sub times a bit?