First attempt at wide field

It's been a while from I've been able to do any imaging, due to an immanent house move, most of my gear is boxed up so thought I'd give some wide field a go.

This is 30 x 20 sec exposures at ISO 1600 f4.0 using my Canon 60D with the nifty 50 attached (no calibration) and just a little post processing in PS. I mounted the camera on a tripod, pointed it at Cygnus and took a sample shot to use as a custom white balance then let her go. The camera had the EOS Clip LP filter attached.

Needs some work:

Megrez 80 First Light

Not really played much with the ED 80 since buying it, so decided to make the most of the clear sky last night to redo my EQMOD star map.

Added a dozen or so points to the map and tested the GoTo accuracy.

Was quite impressed with the view on Jupiter, could clearly see both the north and south equatorial belts, and four moons. Definitely going to be a photo target next clear night I have time.

M45 Pleiades was awash with stars, simply stunning.

Also had my clearest view of M31 Andromeda Galaxy to date.

The added accuracy gained from the update alignment brought M33 Triangulum_Galaxy dead centre in the FoV, first time viewing this one for me.

All in all, a very enjoyable night, I look forward to imaging with this little beauty.

The latest addition to my scope collection

It's been a while since my last post, due to changes in personal circumstances I didn't really have a lot of enthusiasm for astronomy or astrophotography last winter.  To spur me on this winter, I snagged this and am looking forward to some clear dark nights to test its capabilities.

WO Megrez 80 II with
Dual speed crayford focuser
26mm Meade GX wide angle fully multi-coated EP
5mm Celestron X-Cel EP
Erecting Prism
2" Extender

The fruits of my labour from the weekend

NGC7000 - 29 x 180 sec exposure with dark & flat calibration.  I'm pleased with the reds is this, the camera modification looks promising.

M101 - 34 x 180 sec exposure with dark & flat calibration.  I've overdone the post-processing with this one, needs re-visited when the astro seeing is better I think.

M45 - 7 x 180 sec exposure with dark & flat calibration.  More of a test than anything, wanted to see if the camera mod helped with the nebulosity.

M31 - 48 x 180 sec exposure with dark & flat calibration.  This is a work in progress, lots more data to collect but I'm happy with this as a starter.  Much better than my early efforts.

M27 Dumbbell Nebula

M27 The Dumbbell Nebula, also known as NGC 6853, the Dumbbell Nebula in the constellation Vulpecula is roughly 1,360 light years away.

Taken on 29/07/2011 and consists of 42 mins worth of exposure.

M81 Bode's Nebula

Is a spiral galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. Taken on 23/07/2011 10 x 210 second exposures.  The little galaxy to the lower right (little in astronomical terms that is) is M82.

Another attempt at Andromeda

My first attempt at M31 when I started last August was pretty poor:

This is 5 x 2 min exposures, no darks or bias frames which I think is an improvement:

Looking forward to seeing what difference having the IR filter removed will make when I get round to shooting it in the next month or so.  Flat frames (which I now know how to do) will sort the vignetting.