first image from the Mintron 12V6

[rikyuu]

Finally a clear sky!!

Quickly set up the Mintron and pointed at Vega in Lyra. Attached is my first video capture (frames stacked in Registax) of Vega and Epsilon 1 and 2 in Lyra. These are seperated by about 5 arc minutes (is that the correct terminology?). Also seen is a magnitude 9.45 star to the top right of them, along with a whole host of other stars down to mag 10 and beyond. Oh, and that's without the scope, just a 100mm zoom lens on the Mintron!! I know it's nothing spectacular, but just quickly grabbed the camera to see what it could do by itself. The sky isn't really dark, but playing around with the video contrast and brightness helps loads. Right, off for another play!.....

Tried to see the ring nebula, but it just didn't appear, although hundreds of stars are visible around Lyra. Must have seen about 4 satellites passing through too. Easy to spot as they leave a trail on the monitor screen when the Mintron is integrating.

(click to enlarge)

[ngc2403]

i'am not sure of your field of view but it is pointing to high to see the ring nebula in that image.

i do you know where it is/ silly question but like most thing till you have seen these thing they are hard to find. try finding it with ur eye then pop in the camera to image it and push the integration right put to the max it will record it.

as for the field of view the ring will be very small so you may have got it and not noticed because you where looking for a big ring of light.

looking good though keep it up

ally

[algol]

yah defo a bit too high for the ring.

[Neo_uk]

go down and right a bit to the second set or stars that look like the two in your image and its just to the right of the left hand star.

if you can follow that

chris

[rikyuu]

ah yes, sorry I wasn't very clear in what I wrote, typing to quick so I could rush off for another play! I did reposition for the ring nebula and was looking between Sulafat and Sheliak. Both were just in the field of view, so approx 2 deg FOV. I couldn't see the ring though, maybe I needed more magnification than the 100mm lense could produce or parhaps the 80mm aperture is too small.

[Sam]

The ring is very small and takes some pretty methodical star hoping to find it. It's quite amazing how much your camera picks up!

[rikyuu]

The ring is very small and takes some pretty methodical star hoping to find it. It's quite amazing how much your camera picks up!

Thanks, yes I was quite amazed, considering it was twilight and I live in a fairly light polluted town centre, I could literally only see Vega by eye (the big blob in the image), yet as the camera started integrating, it picked out hundreds of other stars. The sky was so bright through the camera that the LCD monitor was just washed out white, but reducing the brightness on the monitor got the background back to black, without losing the stars.

The video capture, despite being stacked, doesn't quite do justice to what was displayed live on the monitor.

Ooh yes, just looking in more detail on Stellarium, I realise M57 is about half the size of the gap between the two stars in my image (not much of a gap either!). Pretty tiny. Not suprising it's difficult to see. I think the scope will be needed for that one.