Another first

[furrysocks2]

First pic of stars taken through a telescope...

 

Solving another frame shows a very near miss... would have framed quite nicely, too!

 

Datyson T7M (ASI120MM clone), ST102 untracked EQ3-2. No finder.

Gain at 99, I managed 1.2, maybe 1.5s exposures. Live stacked in Sharpcap.

[furrysocks2]

Mag 8.5-ish.

Online FoV calculator gives:

for 1x1 and 2x2.

 

I must have had the 0.5x reducer in it at the time:

1x0.75 degrees FoV, more or less. So the spacing of the FR indeed gives very close to 0.5, about 0.52x. But the reflections (I'm assuming) are terrible!

 

One without the reducer (2x2 binned, also) and it gave me:

 

Looks spot on what astrometry.net determined from the images.

[furrysocks2]

Hehe... another first tonight. It's not much, but it's something...

No-tracking EQ3, 2.1-ish second exposures. 9 stacked in Sharpcap. 8bit is rubbish!

I even managed to stack a few of these in DSS and stretch the life out of it.

 

 

Also success getting my plate-solving perl script hooked up to solve sharpcap snapshots and show me on Stellarium where I was looking...

I got half of the double cluster this time.

 

I need to hook up at least one of the stepper motors, even if it drifts a bit until I get it tuned... can't be worse than this.  

[furrysocks2]

Got a stepper hooked up...

Eyeballed polaris through the mount and stacked for two minutes

A bit of drift, but another first - I've never tracked before.

[geordie85]

Congratulations. Seems like the astrophotography bug has bitten you deep, just like it did with me.