Impromptu session last night with a couple of scopes.

TheycallmeRiver · December 30, 2022

Last night was clearer than I was anticipating so I made a late decision to get out my dob and eVscope and have a look around.

I was really unprepared for this session and I think my eVscope was slightly out of collimation, but time was limited and I only had an hour so I skipped it (I also forgot to take a new dark frame before I started and I think that impacted my results more than the slight miss-collimation).

Anyway, I set up the eVscope as best I could and checked focus with my bahtinov mask, then slewed to M42 to really try out this 'enhanced vision' for the first time. Once that was up and tracking I moved over to my dob I looked at the moon and jupiter. Took a couple of pictures using an iphone X with a new adaptor that i've just bought which I will attach to this post. Back to my eVscope to check on how it was doing on M42. 3 minute exposure yielded this result:

Was pretty impressed. It was a lot clearer through the eyepiece on the scope itself than the 'screenshot' it takes of the in-app image. I was so blown away by what I was seeing that I essentially abandoned my dob and focused on the eVscope for the next half an hour whilst I toured some of the highlights. I spent 4 mins on part of the Pleiades, 11 minutes on the Horse Head, and then 11 minutes on the Triangulum Galaxy. I'll post the results below, all have been touched up in lightroom but I can also share the originals if needed. I'm new to Lightroom so i'm still figuring stuff out.

Mind suitably melted by my first real electronically assisted astronomy experience, I turned the eVscope off. I didn't want to do too much with it because I knew it wasn't set up correctly and I didn't want to overdo things until I've done all the things Unistellar say you should do first before you start. So I went back to my lonely dob on the other side of my garden, slapped in my 31mm Nagler and spent an hour just panning around, lost in the sky with no idea exactly what I was looking at, but lost in the sky just the same.

Such a perfect night for me, and exactly what I needed after a busy Christmas and a tough few months. Went to bed with a huge smile on my face and a much lighter heart.

Pics below (including the edit I made to the M42 image above).