Pluto 6th/7th July 14

[Johan L]

Excellent capture and presentation! 

[turbotim]

Wow that couldn't of been easy, amazing shot!

[Takashi]

Excellent capture! I can imagine there is a great deal of planning for something like this. How did you frame the object? Do you trust your goto so much that it centers the object? :-)

[DrRobin]

Hi,

As my scope is mounted in an obs I use CDC to align it and drive the GOTO.  I keep a permanent set of alignment points and just centre on a bright object near my target first to get an updated alignment point.  Then I just slew to my object.  If the object is very feint, like Pluto, then I take a quick picture and upload it to astrometry to get it calibrated, which confirms I am looking in the right place.

As my mount never moves, it is seldom more than a camera frame away from the object I am after so it is quite easy to locate.

After that I shot a bunch of images and then check later that I have got the object I was after.  In the case of Pluto, two images on two different nights and look for the movement against the static stars.

Robin