My first Nebula pic that turned out to be Capella

[badger111]

It was a lovely evening last night for taking my first pics of celestial objects. As it's only my second outing with my Telescope I thought I'd start off by pointing it at the brightest objects I could see and snapping away using an eyepiece projection technique and my canon 900ti digi cam. I was using a 25mm wide angle eyepiece in my Telescope and the camera was "maxed-out" out on ISO 1600.  I took 50 or so pics with exposures ranging from 8 to 15 secs.

One of the first pictures I saw was this one...

It just blew me away! I thought, WOW!, a nebula; on my camera!! Then reality set-in. I took some more and then started to worry that there was something wrong with my telescope. Most of the pictures were like this one. After looking at my sky charts today, I discovered that it was, in fact, a picture of Capella (I was still massively chuffed with that fact!) - Could it be that I need to clean the mirror/eyepiece lens' on my Skywatcher? I've read articles that say you shouldn't touch the mirror and some that say it's okay if you use the right stuff... Not sure what to do? When I brought it in this morning (around 4am), I looked down the tube and could clearly see slight misting on the mirror (where it was cold out, but warm inside), but more worryingly, I could also see lots of dust/debris/particles on the mirror.

I did manage to get this one out of the same sequence (which I consider the best of the lot)...

Should I clean the mirror and eyepieces??

[sidelight]

To me at least it looks more like dew on the mirrors, not muck.

Cheers

Ross

[badger111]

To me at least it looks more like dew on the mirrors, not muck.

Cheers

Ross

Thanks Ross - how could I avoid that in the middle of the night?

[Scott]

I would doubt very much that this is causd by dirty optics. more likely dew. to check, shine a torch down the tube although primary dewing is more unlikely than secondary mirror. take the ep out and shine the torch in the focuser to check the secondary. a dewshield will defiately help prevent dewing of secondary mirror.

[badger111]

Thanks Auspom - I just had to google "Dew Shield"!! (I love new stuff) - makes perfect sense