Two Very Different Images

[Stub Mandrel]

I took all my kit on  long drive last night to image at a dark sky site.

The conditions were brilliant, I'm sure others have seen better but it was the best opportunity I have ever had. With GOTO, guiding and a cooldled DSLR I should have brought back some stunning images...

Against my expectations my batteries lasted the course, even my laptop. But my home made GOTO box was missing the main target I wanted to image, I kept getting huge blips in DEC (I think my balance was wrong), my guidescope misted up and out of 89 subs I was left with 22 usable ones, and I had to go down to 2 1/2 minutes instead of 5.

Am I disheartened? No, because I took a little visual scope and a pair of binos plus got to look through a 10" dob and got some amazing views, even through my little un' so the evening was far from wasted (see another thread!) In fact I spent more time just looking up without any aid than doing anything else.

No, also I know what I need to work on and I know that more practice getting it to work reliably in the garden is needed. I need to make a guidescope dew heater. I need to do some software work. I need to plan better and arrive earlier. I need a chair. I need an alt-az mount for visual. I need thermals if its going to get any colder!

Here's a Heart Nebula, I can't say it's going to win any prizes, but it's only 11 subs.

This is NGC1023 and IC239. I have picked up the dark lane at bottom left. There's a much better image here, but that was taken with a $10,000 astrograph not a 130P-DS and 8.2 hours of data, not 27 minutes, so I'm not too disheartened! Worth another try with better framing and possibly my longer scope.