Last night's effort

[RobertI]

Finally got out for my first EAA session since November 2014! The evening was pretty fraught, it took a long time to set up and clouds were coming and going. My plan was to observe some Caldwells, but I started with M57 to test the setup (RC6 @F9). Unfortunately M57 is all I managed during the night! I thought I would compare the captures using the RC6 with the captures using the C8 last year. To my amazement I discovered that the captures with the C8 were taken exactly 12 months ago to the hour! Anyway comparisons are below, I think it is clear that the C8's bigger aperture reveals more detail, although seeing, focussing, collimation, tracking, etc, could have all made a difference:

Last time out I found that a quick sharpen in PS brought out tremendous detail, so tried the same on last night's attempt. I'm not sure that I went through the same sharpening process, but the difference is very striking and the C8 is even better:

I also used a Bahtinov mask for the first time and found it very effective.

Any comments, observations, thoughts welcome.

I did try to navigate to get the Cat's Eye nebula before packing up and ended up on what looked like a brightish star, but I could not discern any shape or structure so assumed I had the wrong object so did not try too hard. On reflection I did wonder whether I had seen the right thing after all. Can anyone advise on how it might look with my setup??

Thanks

Rob 

[xtreemchaos]

lovely images mate,well done.thanks for posting.charl.

[MarsG76]

NIce smoke ring... one object I have never imaged yet.... i like the detail you captured.

[orion25]

Beautiful images. The C8 does have the edge, but you got an amazing capture with the RC6 as well. I've made some "entry-level" imaging attempts of M57 using the Orion 127 StarMax with Orion Starshoot Deep Space Camera II:

Thanks for sharing your images, Rob!

Cheers,

Reggie

[RobertI]

Thanks Reggie, and thanks for sharing your video, very interesting to compare.

Rob

[HiloDon]

Hi Rob,

Great work on M57!

I think you probably did see Cat's Eye. I looked up my list of captures and found one I took a while back with my SW 100ed. At 900mm FL, it would be a little shorter than your setup. Easy to mistake for a bright star. I think some long optics would be necessary to see any detail.

Don

[RobertI]

Thanks Don, I'm pretty sure that's what I saw then as there was another bright star nearby as in your capture. I am thinking that although I did not save the image I probably have the individual exposures so I shall dig them out later and post. Sounds like an object to try with the C8 at native FL?

Rob

[HiloDon]

And a 2x Barlow.

Don

[RobertI]

And a 2x Barlow.

Don

Wow, I think I might struggle to find it at that FL using my current setup! Plus I don't have a Barlow...this is harder than I thought!