M35 and my first session out in four months.

[Ant]

This is a fairly rare post - me actually have something to post in one of the imaging sections.... So here goes.

Left the office at around 5:15, on the short drive home I noticed a star out of the window (it was forecast to be 100% cloud), so I wound the window down and had a look up - there was indeed breaks in the cloud.

Got home, played with my son for a bit and had tea, he went to bed at 7. Had a little work to do in the house which took me till around 8pm. Then decided to look out... at this time is was about 50/50 but it was windy. So i left it another 15 minutes or so and checked again - now it was more like 80/20 with the 20% cloud sitting over the moon.

So I set the scope up and roughly polar aligned - used my new 2" Extension tube for the first (Cheers Arthur ), even under the low magnification of the 32mm EP Saturn looked really crisp, M42 looked good. I wanted to image something that I haven't imaged before - so I decided to go for M35 (open cluser in Gemini).

In the EP it looked really great, so i went into the garage to roll a fag (yes I know ) and sort the 300D out etc, came back and it was gone - by a long way...

Checked the connections to the power station, all ok but no red light on the mount! [removed word] the lead must be damaged so I changed the lead... no luck. Changed the power station - just in case the fuse had gone - no luck...

By this point I'm starting to panic a little - hoping that the mount hadn't gone wrong in the last few months... So I got the multi meter out and started checking voltages etc and found that the lead and the power station were both OK.

So a little confused I went back out to the mount and plugged everything back in and still nothing - [removed word] the mounts gone... Then i wondered if the handset had to be turned on - turned on the hadset and everything came to life.... So by this time I was quite releived but did feel a bit of a idiot!

So connected the camera up slewed to M35 and took 30 x c18secs (some were slightly more and some were less). Then I moved over to M42, I wanted to get the running man - as I remembered seeing it in the image that Russ took. But I didn't really know where the running man was (I thought that it was a lot further away than it acdtually turned out to be) so I spend about 15 minutes moving M42 around in the FOV to try and get both and then noticed that it was in fact really close.

By this time the bank of cloud that had been sitting over Rogers house had moved in and by the time I took the last image of M42 Taurus and half of Orion had gone behind the cloud...

Here's the M35 shot - click on the image for a bigger version.

Ant

[russ]

Great image Ant. Superb focus, those stars are really tight. Tracking is good too.

Sounded like one my sessions out. Rushed, something adrift and in a panic of some sort.

You made the best of the short break in the clouds though. Did it feel good to be back out, all be it briefly?

Russ

[CELESCOPE]

beautiful image Ant, thats really nice , but hang on a min HAND ON HIPS ,how come i was in thick cloud all night and u had the luxury of imaging , that just aint fair . :lol:, but yes its rare but nice to see an image from you ehehheh ,well done mate good one .

Rog

[Ant]

Hi guys,

Yep it was fantastic being out again - even if things didn't go according to plan. The thing that threw me was the handset being turned off.... I never turn it of - I just unplug the power. But I seem to remember Jamie playing with the hand controller last time we were in the garage.

I was actually thinking (whilst imaging) that the bank of cloud was probably sitting over your house Rog. It was actually only clear for an hour in Rayleigh - so if you happened not to look out during that hour it would have seemed to have been cloudy all night.

The other thoughts that went through my mind were - this must be what it's like to be Russ - this is the first time I have serious equipment problems...

I guess for once that I was just lucky.

Ant

[The Warthog]

Nice image, Ant. Sometimes with large open clusters, I'm not sure whether I'm seeing a cluster, or just a bunch of loose stars. It's nice to nail one. Love that image!

[daz]

Nice report and really glad to see you get again and a great image as well.

More please!!

[lunator]

Ant thats I great image especially given the 'techincal difficulties'

There was a gap in the cloud yesterday but it passed over my house whilst the sun was still up

[tom.yates]

Really nice image mate

[FLO]

Great image Ant

[Rob]

Nice report there Ant. Glad the kits in working order.

Rob

:sunny:

[MartinB]

Well done Ant. I saw a watery sun for 10 seconds this afternoon but that's been it in Chesterfield. Must be great sneaking an image when everyone else is covered in mirk

Martin

[OXO]

Great Image Ant and nice too se you out again with ya scope.

James