M44 - the Beehive

[jgs001]

Took this last night. No flats, darks or camera. An exposure of about 35 minutes onto a piece of paper with an ISO setting of HB. What do you think ?

[steppenwolf]

I think your 140mm pencil is suffering very slightly from a vignetting problem that drawing a flat might resolve but not sure how you would subtract it ...... Nicely caught though, I admire your patience

[rawhead]

Hope you don't mind but I've played around a bit. Inverted, sharpened etc............ :? :? :?

Nice drawing John

(click to enlarge)

[Paxo]

Nice drawing John. I do think it would benefit from darks though, and as your already inverted colourwise, it should be an easy process to do

[Sam]

Nicely done John! I imagine it's no easy task sketching a cluster.

Sam

[jgs001]

Thanks guys. I forgot to mention, this was taken afocally using a 17mm Hyperion with a mk1 eyeball attachment on the 80SLT.

RH thanks for the inversion, didn't even occur to me, something to take note of for the next go, and the sharpening will definitely be useful, the pencil is looking a little less pointy.

Steve, taking the flat is easy, you're right staking it could be hard.

Steve, I think RH did the dark work for me...

[Cloudwatcher]

An excellent result.

Those HB jobs can be a bit of a handful when trying to achieve sharp focus. I hear there's a De Luxe version in the pipeline fitted with a rubberized correction module on the blunt end! More expence,where will it end!

Cheers

CW

[SteelRat]

35 minute exposure? Manually guided too. Nice one John 8)

Cheers

Matthew(SR)

[jgs001]

Thanks, CW, I'll have to rush out and get me one of them de luxe ones now... Where did I put the "black hole" credit card. Thanks Matt, whilst the nexstar alignment was so far out (even when it said "Alignment Successful") it wouldn't goto what I told it to, it tracked just fine.