Wide Field Piggy Back

[Langy]

Finally got some clear skies last night. After playing around with the webcam for about 30 minutes I just couldn't get any detail on Jupiter, so it may well have not been as clear as it looked.

So with that I went back to the old faithful and sat the EOS 300D on top of the scope using my 75 - 300mm lens.

First item on the agenda before it dropped down over the roof of my house was M45 Pleiades. Starting off at 15 second exposures f5.6 I only managed to get about 15 in before it started going behind the roof of the house, so took the usual 20 darks to go with it. Can't see any noticeable signs of trailing stars so I wonder how much further I could have gone.

Next up was the M44, NGC 2632 BeeHive cluster. Decided to go for a much wider view of this one as the camera wasn't fully aligned with the scope and I wanted to try for longer exposures. The image below was at 75mm 25 second exposures.

http://nova.astrometry.net/image/530741

Happy with the last image I finally moved on to somewhere around M81 / M82 hoping I could capture something at the 75mm FL. This time being closer to the Zenith I knew I could push things a lot more and decided to shoot at 45 seconds, managing to get in around 25 lights and the usual 20 darks. M81 and M82 clearly visible just below centre of the image. If you zoom in though at M81 and look 35 - 40 degrees (top right) from there at a distance between 2-3 times the gap between M81 and M82, I'm not sure if that is another galaxy. It looks very similar to M82 but about half the brightness giving it a hint of that galaxy smudge. Very pleased to capture so much here, a little noisy but very pleased.

http://nova.astrometry.net/image/530729

Just printed the above picture out on my laser printer in the office and it looks pretty good, need to darken the sky a little.

Now as much as I love the images that we see on here of the close up shots of galaxies and nebula at these long exposure times and I could look at time and time again, it's nice to get some results like I've got here just using simple kit and a cheap MD on a budget scope. Just gives a totally different look to AP which can be completed by almost anyone on a shoestring budget.

[nicks90]

thats fantastic, you got a couple of galaxies with a camera on a cheap mount! I would be over the moon with that. Just currently working out a way to attach my dslr to my tracking dob to do simillar.