2014-09-30

I had another astro night at my balcony. The plan was to photograph two galaxies (NGC 185 and NGC 147) between Andromeda and Cassiopeia. They are quite dim (magnitudes around 9) so I didn’t have much hope in finding them with the Astrotrac mount. Despite these conditions I eventually found it and I let the camera roll for about an our. However I discovered from the result that something in the optical line in my APO refractor isn’t right and I suspect it to be a misaligned focuser. The stars in the pictures got oval and I know is not due to vignetting. I have to get this focuser fixed!

When I was searching for the galaxies I ran over the Dragonfly cluster close to Cassiopeia as a coincidence. I have never heard of the cluster before but I have to admit that you can (with a little fantasy) see the dragonfly shape… Anyway I took a couple of exposures of it and the result was acceptable despite the problem with the misaligned focuser.

NGC457 – Dragonfly cluster

I also got the chance to experience the actual difference between using the CLS filter and not using it. I took a couple of test exposures at the Andromeda Galaxy to show it.

CLS-filter

2014-09-16

The nights starting to get dark and the season is about to begin 🙂

This was the first night I even got the idea of trying the sky for a picture this season. The weather forecasts talked about clear weather and it seemed like it was going to be a good night. I put up the APO-refractor on the Astrotrac and rigged it all up on the balcony.

Then I realised that it was almost a full moon high in the sky 🙁 I decided to make a go anyway with the justification that it was just a quick and not-serious try.
This was also the first try out of my new modified DSLR and I was curious about if it worked as it should.

One and a half hour later I saw that the sky had become cloudy and it was time to abort. I got some good raw-files anyway and it was a delight to see the result after stacking and processing in Photoshop.

The result was far better than I could ever hope for with the given conditions.

NGC281 – Pacman Nebula

 The start of the season looks promising!