A Hole In The Clouds!

[The-MathMog]

I recently got hands on my first equatorial mount, a Celestron Advanced VX mount.. And the curse holds true, that after purchasing new gear, you are to bear the burden of weeks of bad weather! So whenever there has been minor holes in the clouds, I've been out practicing star alignment, polar alignment, and just the general behavior of the mount, pointing at any star that would glance through the thin cloud cover. Hope to soon be able to practice drift alignment.

A patch of "clear sky" showed itself a few nights ago, so I thought I would try and see how far I could push the unguided exposures (having only done the ASPA). And even though thin clouds would regularly pass over the target, I am at least pleased that I could squeeze this out of the image. +- 1 minute exposures of the center of the noble M45, Pleiades. 5-6 shots later, the clouds came rolling in again... So here I am stuck looking at my mount collecting dust and browsing these forums again  

Looks like there is some coma that needs fixing too.

Scope is the Celestron 130 SLT OTA. Using a barlow right now to achieve focus. Trying to obtain the screws needed to move the mirror.



As a bonus, I noticed the presence of a magnitude 17.2 in this one, faintest I've caught yet I think.

[Filroden]

What length exposures did you achieve?

Edit: just saw you added the info in an edit of your own!

[The-MathMog]

1 minute ago, Filroden said:

What length exposures did you achieve?

Edit: just saw you added the info in an edit of your own!

Indeed haha, forgot that minor important part