observing report.. & a first DS image

[philipok]

Bank Holiday Monday.. possibly the first opportunity I had to observe since January.. clear skies, not too cold, and off work the next day. I decided to set up early, and was given a deadline of midnight by my wife (it's a give and take thing, this astronomy lark). She didn't realise when she bought me my telescope that it is a madly unsociable hobby..

My major triumph of the week was finally connected stellarium and my DSI to the telescope via a USB/serial connector.. having stellarium control the scope is a joy.

Started off with Saturn at 9.30.. nice sharp disc and rings through the 10" lx200 - Titan, Rhea, Enceladus, Dione and Tethys all visible (and identified via stellarium).

Then onto m65/66 in Leo - fairly bright pair of galaxies, a look at m97 in Ursa Major, and m51 in CV.. having a neighbours kitchen light on slightly killed that.

The next hour was spent chasing Comet Cardinal in Auriga.. pretty sure I could see it in the binoculars, but getting the scope to find it was a big failure.. enlisted my patient wife to check the coordinates online but still no luck. Anyone else seen this?

Then onto NGC 4565 in Coma Beren - a nice, edge on galaxy, a splinter of light with a dark dust lane visible in averted vision. At about 11:15 I decided to finally get the DSI out after *2.5 years* of non-use. I imaged saturn with it once back in 07, but nothing since. I was thinking I'd wasted my money..

With rudimentary focusing, no dark frames and tracking not properly calibrated (alt-az!). I took the attached, and was pleasantly surprised.. 14 exposures @ 20 secs each. it is grainy, badly focused and not well framed, but I still am quite proud. I processed the hell out of it in Iris. Wavelet noise reduction and LR deconvolution helped.

and so to bed...

[steppenwolf]

You should indeed be proud of that - well done on your 'first'!

[philipok]

thanks! - although I fear some of those stars are merely hot pixels.. clearly I'm at the bottom of a steep learning curve.

cheers

p

[MikeD]

Nice catch.

The question is, has the imaging bug bitten you now.

Mike.

[philipok]

I think it has - and I always vowed I was a visual observer. I have to say I never expected the Meade DSI to work - it was always so buggy when starting up. However, getting an eyepiece parfocal helped, and maybe I build myself a Hartman mask now..

p

[MikeD]

Cool.

forget the hartman and go straight for a Bahtinov Mask

Mike.