Anyone else daft enought to be imaging tonight?

[ChrisLX200]

LOL. Must be mad. Bright moon, a couple of hours of semi-darkness, and I'm out here trying to get images of the Veil neb in Ha. And I just had an Owl land on the Obs roof - I don't know who was more surprised when I poked my head out the door, me or it. Probably a good night for hunting little furry things though.

ChrisH

[red dwalf]

i`m out trying to get the last subs for the blue channel for my image of m51, if any of it turns out well i`ll be amazed as i`ve had Moon light for every session, bought a new 314 L+ and haven`t used it yet as i wanted to finish of this image first, then with luck i cab sell the older camera.

[PhotoGav]

No, but wishing I had been! At last pretty clear skies. Anyway, I have learned the hard way that it really isn't worth trying with a DSLR for a week either side of full moon. I'm very interested to hear how the subs come out and whether it was worth your while being out there with a CCD though as I am moving in that direction very soon.

Nice bonus to chat with an owl, they are magnificent birds aren't they?!

[red dwalf]

my subs came out not bad considering the amount of Moon light, and the slight misty haze, so now i`ve finished the lrgb of M51 the Atik Titan ccd is up for sale.

bought the next step up and Atik 314L+, i`ve wanted one for ages but the price kept putting me off but had to bite the bullet, there never coming down in price.

[PhotoGav]

Interesting, look forward to seeing the image posted. Good luck with the new Atik!

[Zakalwe]

I had a bash to see if I could get first light with my new Altair 115 and Photoline reducer. I knew that it would be a challenge as I was knackered tired (stressful week with my Dad having to go into intensive care following an emergency bowel operation). I was going to bed at 11:30 when I saw clear skies. Even though I knew that I had an early start this morning I rolled back the obsy roof, fired everything up and slewed to Vega to focus. I had to mess about with balance as the reducer meant that the focus point has changed a fair bit, so the focuser draw tube is a lot further inwards. Plus the Photoline reducer is a massive lump of glass and is very heavy. The star test looked good, with nice crisp diffraction rings.

I then slewed to M51 and set it off to do 4 x 10 minute subs in H-a. not great conditions with a haze in the air, but I could see that the data looked OK (ish). I was surprised by how much detail was in the H-a regions. The image scale is much better than on my old reduced (f5) Equinox.

At 1AM I was nearly collapsing with tiredness, so I started to close up. It was only then that I realised that I had left the 2x2 binning on the camera (facepalm!   ), so I'll end up deleting the captured data.  Still, i got first light and now have a plan to gather some decent H-a of M51 to add into the colour data that I collected last year.

[ChrisLX200]

Conditions were not exactly ideal here either, apart from the twilight and near-full moon there was haze and occasional thicker cloud drifting by (I'll swear they time it so they pass over when you're 95% the way through a 20min sub!). The seeing was not good either, I didn't use an eyepiece but I watched the guidestar image from the Lodestar and it was wobbling and almost double at times. The Ha filter cut through most of the crud but I'm sure the result would have been much better under darker skies. I just posted one of the images of the Witches Broom (E. Veil Neb) taken last night.

ChrisH

[RikM]

I had a quick look out but decided not to bother. The moon was bright, seeing was rubbish, plus it was a work night