Astronomy & Astrophotography

In the last few years I have got really into astronomy, like the first people to journey to the corners of our own planet; there is a whole universe to explore right above our heads. My home skies are about half way between the horrible light pollution of a city and the clear black skies of more remote locations, fortunately it is also only a 15 minute drive to leave the lights of Torbay and head into the rural outskirts by the sea and much darker skies.

My practical interest in astronomy started with viewing the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter through my friends Russian Newtonian telescope. It's one thing to know something like a planet exists; but to witness it with your own eyes brings a very different experience! One thing leads to another and together with my interest in DSLR night sky photography I've had to progress to tracking night sky objects with a modern telescope.

Meade ETX 105 Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope

This wasn't a planned purchase at all, it came up in an ad in the local paper so I did a lot of Googling and ended up buying it! Meade ETX scopes seam to be very common and some people have captured some very impressive results with them though various imaging techniques. The telescope has alt-az and polar tracking modes which basically means it can compensate for the rotation of the earth and therefore appear to make the stars stand still. So where normally I would shoot star trails from a static camera; with tracking the stars stay still allowing light to be gathered for long periods of time. This applies to either wide field views of the heavens with a normal camera mounted piggy back on the scope; or through the scope itself for tracking planets or deep sky objects.

The scope came with the Autostar hand controller for all the scope settings and slewing (moving) the scope around. Once aligned properly; this gives the scope 'goto' functionality so you can pick an object from the on screen database, press 'goto', and the scope automatically moves to that object in the sky. It also came with the Meade LPI ccd imager (Lunar & Planetary Imager, basically a Meade USB webcam) and Autostar Suite software for computer based remote control but I haven't explored this much yet.

I now have the Meade QX4000 20mm as my main eye-piece, this was well worth the money as it has a much larger apparent field of view (70deg) while also magnifying slightly more than my 26mm. Put simply; this has a much wider glass lens to look through which is far more comfortable on the eye, some of the cheeper Meade plossl's are like looking through a keyhole. I'm not using the 2x Barlow so much now since getting that eye-peice.

 

My journal of experience with the Meade ETX 105 telescope

Sun spots return as the solar cycle advances (26/3/2008)

Since last summer the Sun has been uneventful showing no signs of activity, this was due to the solar cycle being at solar minimum. Cycles from minimum to maximum and back to minimum last about 11 years and we are currently in the first couple years of the increasing activity leading towards another solar maximum. The solar cycle is the magnetic cycle the Sun goes through; at each end of the cycle the polarity of the magnetic field reverses and the sign this is happening is observing sun spots with reverse polarity. The first opposite polarity sun spot was seen in summer 2006 heralding the mid point of solar minimum and the beginning of a new solar cycle. EDIT: Actually there is more to it; these 5 sunspots are the poliarity of the previous solar cycle; it seams we are in between cycles, more info here.

This picture was taken with my D50 attached to the rear port of my telescope and using my home made solar filters discussed below. I didn't get the ideal focus for some reason but I still managed to get about the same resolution as the image on the SOHO website. This wasn't my first attempt at sunspots but this one shows a fair amount of activity, I'm sure there will be much better opportunities in the next few years leading up to solar max.

Comet Holmes (17P) - A new sight in the region of Perseus (29/10/2007)

Earlier this week I was alerted to the presence of a new object in the sky, Comet Holmes had unexpectedly brightened from a dim 17th magnitude to a naked eye magnitude of 2.5 or so which is currently visible as a yellowish blurry star-like object in the middle of Perseus. People are still speculating about why this has happened; perhaps the comet is breaking up and revealing more surface area or something; but either way most people seam to think it will be in our night sky for some time and will undergo some change on a daily basis. There is a fan shape in the central area but no cometary tail yet and theres not likely to be much of a tail at any time as the trail would be facing nearly directly away from us.

I spotted it with the naked eye first simply by noticing that the central region of Perseus now has a triangle which it wouldnt normally have. Through binoculars it shows up as a large fuzzy circular object; through the telescope it is big and has a distinct inner region as well as a dimmer round disc, the nucleus is star like and there is also a star-like object to the top right which I think is actually a background star. My image was done hastily with the D50 prime focus through the scope in alt-az mode; the star-like object top right has a bit of trailing due to the tracking not being very accurate but you get the idea of what is visible. I'll be keeping an eye on this comet as anything could happen really!

I've just added this image on the left as a guide to where the comet is, at the moment the waning Moon is just below the house near the horizon.

Waning Gibbous Moon - Prime Focus (5/9/2007)

I've still got a long way to go with images of the Moon but definately have improved from my previous attempts here. I've also just got my head around the Waxing (before full) and Waning (after full), Crescent and Gibbous (negative or opposite to crescent) and the causes of seasons, eclipses, maria on the Moon etc, the internet is a wonderful source of video lectures and free education! Labelling objects in Photoshop really helps with learning the features.

Again I had taken lots of images in the hope that stacking in software would yeild the best results however so far the best single exposure is the nicest looking image. I seam to be missing something fundemental in Registax! A lot of the reason why this image looks as pleasing as it does is due to NoiseWare noise reduction and sharpening, this simple and free program is great at smoothing the maria (sea's) of the surface at the same time as sharpening the craters and other features. I think to better this image I'll have to use the LPI and perhaps mosiac a few pictures together. This picture was taken with my D50 prime focus through the ETX-105, 1/100th of a sec at ISO1600, normally I would be worried that high ISO means crunchy image but it seams fine. No motorized tracking required at shutter speeds that fast, also noting that the seeing conditions were particularly stable that night.

More experiments in polar mode and software stacking (25/8/2007)

One of my biggest goals right now is to capture images of the Milky Way where you can see plenty of detail in the clouds of stars and dark dusty patches plus many of the nebula and clusters within. I was thinking this should be a fairly easy task! I've done star trails in the direction of the summer Milky Way before (see the Night Sky page) which have revealed a fair bit of the overall structure but obviously not much of individual objects, the main potential in those pictures was due to being taken from our dark sky location rather than from home. Anyway, I have much to learn so prepared another night of tests on a lovely Summers night at home under my fairly light polluted sky.

I haven't managed to get an accurate alignment using polar mode (mounted equatorially) yet and am still struggling however for wide field DSLR piggy back photography small errors don't cause too much of a problem. I'm also having some problems possibly due to the weight of the camera; occasionally the scope will loose grip on the teeth of the gears and slewing goes nowhere; if I put a little pressure on the scope in the direction i'm supposed to be going then the scope picks up the grip and moves on. My opinion here is that mounting an SLR in prime focus is only applicable for non-motorized control as the ETX just isn't strong enough to take the weight, piggy back mounting an SLR is less strain but still not ideal due to the additional stress on the motors; this doesn't stop it being used for wide field SLR work but there are going to be limits.

Light pollution tends to make my images go orange after around 10 minutes of exposure plus I have no dew protection on the SLR yet (coming soon) so you only have a certain time before the stars start showing far less definition and eventually a ruined image. Combined with problems in tracking etc; the way around this, apparently, is to stack images in software. However, my attempts at this on wide-field images so far have given worse results than just taking long exposures. I had taken two series' of images to be stacked; the Cygnus area was 16 x 30secs so equivalent to an 8 minute exposure, I'd tried various settings in Rot'n'Stack but the more pleasing image was the single 8 minute exposure.

Rot'n'Stack is however the program I've had most success from so far (excluding LPI imaging with Envisage); it de-rotates and aligns images very well indeed and I managed to make a good improvement on last Summers attempt at the Double Cluster in Perseus (image to the left). I only had four images taken in Alt-Az mode of around 1 minute each but the software did a really good job of bringing out more stars and clarifying the image. These pictures were done from our dark sky location which makes a huge difference.

The first picture above shows the region of Milky Way between Cassiopeia and Cygnus equatorially tracked for just under 8 minutes. The middle shot above is a random Meteor streaking across one of my exposures. The third picture is the Perseus and Andromeda area exposed for around 5.6 minutes. All taken at the minimum focal ratio of F3.5 through the standard 18-55 lens, the ISO isn't recorded in the file properties but I'm pretty sure I was shooting at ISO800.

First go at imaging Jupiter (20/7/2007)

The weather is still being a pain but you have to take the opportunities between clouds or whenever it clears up. Jupiter is the obvious object in the skies at the moment but it is pretty low towards the horizon which means you have to look through more atmosphere to see it, this isn't ideal but with such a large planet its still a serious target for LPI photography. I'd only done this with Saturn before so have little experience; also my LPI is not fitting into the scope properly which is causing problems.

I just set the scope up as normal and did an Alt-Az alignment, once Jupiter was in the eye-piece I swapped it for the LPI, then connected the scope to the PC and opened the Envisage software. Focusing is a tricky business as you wobble the scope every time you touch the focusser but a little patience gets it close enough to start taking images. With the barlow in I had big problems keeping Jupiter on the screen so unfortunately had to take it out; this means I'm working with half the magnification of the Saturn pictures below. Again I switched to monochrome to get a clearer exposure and more detail, it seams to over-expose the central part of the object in colour, this isn't a problem in the long run because I should be using RG&B filters for 3 separate mono images that get combined into a colour image in post-processing.

This image wouldn't be worth putting on the website if it wasn't for the two moons visible, Ganymede and Europa. When you see Saturn through my telescope it is the rings that take your attention but there also a few moons visible, with Jupiter the moons are part of the show for me, always a few moons in view on a straight line with the planet. You can see some colour banding to Jupiter but I don't think its possible to make out the great red spot unless you have exceptionally good atmospheric conditions and more magnification than my normal viewing setup of 26mm eye-piece with 2x barlow. In the future I should be able to make major improvements on this image.

Summer Milky Way from the Northern Hemisphere (8/7/2007)

After a long break again due to the weather we managed to get a decent nights viewing from my friends place. We are looking to the South from his balcony which is ideal to see the Milky Way all the way from Sagittarius up to Cygnus giving us very rich skies and many new objects to see. There is a flat paved floor which makes life easy to get the scope flat with the spirit level and aligned properly. I'm now getting quite quick with the Alt-Az alignment process and the scope performs really well, goto puts the object in the 28mm eye piece almost every time. I'm not using the Barlow much from here as that is best with darker skies.

A few days ago we had a brief session and accidentally found a few objects without electronics but needed to confirm which objects they were before I wrote them down. This session I also wanted to go through the first part of the Messier catalogue as they are all in the dense Milky Way region to the south. I started with the 'Today's Best' tour on the Autostar and that revealed the two objects seen a few nights before; the most notable of these was the Wild Duck cluster; an irregular shaped bright and dense open cluster with two close stars off to one side, a very nice sight. Also the DumBell nebula up in Cygnus which I was sure we had identified right as you can see the smudged dumbell shape pretty well.

Again, from there the Messier objects just kept on coming; starting from M6 onwards I managed to see every object up to M29 except M7 (Ptolemy's Cluster), which was too low in the sky, and also missed out M25 though it may just be that its a very loose open cluster and it just didn't look like anything special. Most of these objects are within only a few degrees of each other so the scope doesn't have to move far, all these are within our own galaxy off-course; clusters and nebulous regions of star formation and also planetary nebula illustrating the end-times of a near by star such as the gorgeous Ring Nebula in Lyra. Great fun!

Messier fest under partially moonlit skies! (23/5/2007)

After weeks of crap skies and the Moon just starting to enter the night sky we didn't really expect anything great while setting up to watch Saturn being occulted by the Moon. At only 9:30pm there was still a lot of blue in the sky but managed to watch Saturn as it came out away from the crystal clear Moon, highly detailed with about a third of it in sunlight. The deep blue skies were giving hope of dark skies but we had to wait for the Moon to get out of the way first, either way I decided to setup and alt-az align the telescope for a nights viewing.

I was determined to get at least one new Messier object to add to the list so decided to wonder through the 'tonights best' tour on the scope; first unseen object in the list was M104 - the Sombrero galaxy. Being low in the sky and near the Moon direction it was a bit washed out but we found it using the goto and a little slewing about. Good start; what's next? M64 the Black Eye galaxy was near-by, found that too though not too impressive under the conditions. Next? M51 the Whirlpool Galaxy; wow! This was a cool sight to see; two bright cores next to each other; not much detail but pretty impressive, the scope seamed to slew to this bang on. I'd been trying to find M51 by eye in the past and had no luck.

From there we went through another 9 Messier objects not seen before! The telescope was getting most of these straight into the eyepiece with no additional searching necessary. Mainly globular clusters of varying types but most notably the Ring Nebula in Lyra (M57), this planetary nebula was very clear and with the barlow I could see a slight elongation to the ring, very nice. I had thought M101 should be easy to find but now I know why we couldn't find it; this galaxy may be magnitude 7.7 but it was widely distributed so only just visible with my scope, very dim indeed; I had slewed to it and not seen it but on a second attempt I realised it was there. Also we couldn't resist a look at Jupiter with its moons; there was a dark band obvious but couldn't quite see the great red spot itself. Overall a top nights viewing even with the Moon causing a lot of light pollution.

EDIT: I had originally called this post "Messier Marathon..." but felt I was overstating the reality! I now know that a proper Messier Marathon is going through every single one of the Messier Catalogue in one night! Not an easy task and can only be done in Spring from certain locations. I think it's unlikely I'll ever complete one but maybe give it a go in the future with a bigger scope etc.

Home made solar filter set for the ETX-105 for £8! (5/4/2007)

The Sun is the most readily observable object as long as you have the necessary filters to save your precious eye-sight. I had seen sun spots through a friends telescope last summer and we actually sat and sketched them, first and only time I've ever done sketches. He had the Astro-Engineering solar filter for the ETX-125 which cost him about £90, the filter for my ETX-105 is about £80 and so had to look at cheeper options. I then found the Baader AstroSolar safety film available in A4 sheets for £15 that does the same job!

First I butchered a plant pot which loosely fit the telescope and that worked; but then it occurred to me to try the container for a CD spindle and to my amazement it fits exactly; not close but exact! Not only that but it has convenient little handles on the side so you can remove the filter without stressing the solar film. Even better; you can get the scope filter and the viewfinder filter out of one half of the A4 sheet so there's enough left to make one for my mates Tal scope as well!

All I did was cut the top out of the CD spindle with a stanley knife from the inside and then sellotape the solar film into place. To make a more pleasing look I've then gone around it with white electrical tape; this also seals the outsides of the transparent plastic so no light can get in. Job done; on the first day in months that there were no sun spots at all! No rush; look out for some CCD images of solar features on here soon.

First time: polar/equatorial mounting (13/3/2007)

All the time I have had the telescope so far I've been using the easy Alt-Az mounting system. This works fine and is easy to do but I've been noticing the side effects of this mounting in my DSLR wide-angle long exposures and also my attempts at deep sky objects such as the orion nebula below. The problem is that the scope cannot twist to compensate for the circular rotation of the night sky. The advantage of equatorial mounting is that only one axis (azimuth - left/right) needs to be adjusted to follow an object; the declination axis (up/down) is locked and tracking at the sidereal rate (approx 1 rotation per 24 hours) and twists as it tracks across the sky. This one-axis tracking excludes planets and comets etc which don't move consistently across the sky with the rotation of the Earth.

I'm pretty sure I got this aligned correctly the first time and this picture of Orion seams better than my other attempts; it certainly gets around the rotational problems. However, after this shot I moved over to the beehive cluster and the picture of that was badly tracked so I decided to re-align the scope, this second alignment procedure went badly wrong and the scope seamed to loose touch with which planet we were on! Not sure what went wrong, possibly scope battery power; possibly motors not liking my DSLR adding weight in polar mode, either way I'll have another go very soon. This exposure was just over 8 minutes and needed a lot of Photoshop leveling to get the best out of it.

Second attempt at Saturn imaged with the LPI (10/3/2007)

After having a decent shot a few days ago and reading more about the LPI, I wanted another go at Saturn. This time I've used monochrome (grayscale) which gives the exposure a lot more definition. For some reason in colour the center area of the planet is always over exposed; reducing the exposure time doesn't seam to cure this. I spent a lot of time trying to get the focus right which is very hard to do; sometime soon I'll get the electronic focuser to get hands-free and more precise.

I also raised the minimum quality of shots to 90% before they are used in the composite, as long as the first 'evaluation' images are decent quality then this ensures only decent shots are stacked on top. Unfortunately the software doesn't record the info about the image in the meta-data so I don't actually know how many images are stacked here; I suspect something like 100 as that was one threshold I was using. Photoshop levels and contrast were used to add the finishing touches.

There is now some banding to the planet sphere itself and two distinct sections to the ring system, the next target has to be the Cassini Division which is the seperating gap between these two halves. I'm using the 2xBarlow again to get as close as I can; would be interesting to see how a 3xBarlow looks. Very happy with the results for now.

Tracked wide feild shot of the Orion region (9/3/2007)

Last night we went up to Colleton (our darkest location) but the conditions were clearish with patches of hazey cloud so not ideal seeing. My plan was to get a proper tracked shot of Orion before it disapears for the summer, hopefully showing the large amount of colour and nebulosity within the Orion region. The hardest part for my wide angle shots is focusing; the little veiwfinder on the camera isn't enough to see stars properly plus my 18-55mm lens goes over-infinity so it is not as simple as putting the focus full right; you must bring it back a milimeter or two.

The first shot is a two minute exposure of the whole area, covering Sirius; the brightest star in the night sky to the left, then the well known shape of Orion the hunter in the center and the Haydes triangle to the right which is part of Taurus. The focus wasn't right so not worth showing in higher resolution. I used one application of auto-levels in Photoshop which really enchanced the amount of stars visible. I might have another crack at it in coming days.

The second shot is a strange one, no it's not the pole star! I'm pretty sure this is demonstrating the telescope's ability to compensate for rotation when tracking a planet. The object at the center is Saturn and the scope knew this, I expected a normal long exposure of this region but I think the scope must twist over time to compensate for Saturn's rotation and ignoring celestial (the stars) movement. I could be wrong?! To the right of center you can see a fuzzy patch which is the Beehive Cluster otherwise known as the Praesepe. The exposure was 9.5 minutes at F3.5, again I have enchanced the brightness with Photoshop's levels tool.

First picture of a planet :) Saturn imaged with the LPI (7/3/2007)

I've been having a go with the LPI (Meade CCD cam) on the moon but not had any real success yet because of tracking problems, however I've learned more about the Envisage software in the process. This evening I decided to have a go at Saturn with the laptop just indoors, I have a longish usb lead for the LPI and a long rs232>usb lead for the scope control. The LPI Imaging software is controling the scope fine now and seams to be assisting the scope with tracking though I'm a little confused at exactly whats going on!

The software has auto exposure which seams to be a good starting point, then you can draw a box around Saturn and the box tracks the object. I'm thinking that the scope is then being guided by the software and it does seam to be; but I thought guiding was done seperatly... either way I managed to get a fairly good picture of the great ringed planet without too much trouble. Focusing is a pain as I dont have the electronic focuser, even with the extended focus gadget the scope is still disturbed by any movement. Plus at the moment I have the laptop just inside the back door to keep dew from forming on it so I have a distance between the lappy and the scope.

Anyway, this image is about 20 pictures stacked realtime with 'align & combine' in the software, no additional image processing at all because nothing I tried in Photoshop made any improvement. I was using the 2x barlow on the top port of the scope with the LPI masking tape'd into place! Not bad for first attempt :)

New Moon (23/1/2007)

This winter has been perticularly warm again due to plenty cloud cover which off-course is not good for astronomy. I'm dying to try some proper tracked shots of Saturn and the Orion Nebula using the LPI but the conditions just haven't allowed yet. Still, I have a lot of room for improvment on my Moon pictures even without using tracking, ideally the close moon pictures should be tracked as the more you are zoomed in the more movement there is; I found the maximum exposure I could use was about 100th/sec without trailing.

This picture was taken with my Nikon D50 attached to the rear port of the telescope with the T-mount. At 100th/sec and with my telescope being F14 these shots were not very well lit so Photoshop was vital for getting a brighter picture. Next time I intend to use tracking to keep the subject still, and also will try mulitple shots for stacking; either with the Nikon camera or the Meade LPI ccd imager. The other thing to try is using the LPI imaging software to track a point like a crater selected on the Moon, you drag a box around the point and hopefully it should track it perfectly, we'll see; need to get a a rs232>usb converter first for the telescope control.

Winter Skies - First try of M42 the Orion Nebula (29/11/2006)

I've been dying to see Orion through the scope since I got it and it was no let down! The main Orion Nebula is probably the most impressive sight I have seen through my scope so far, it's large and it's magnitude 4 so very bright indeed for a nebula, so bright it seams easy to over-expose it when doing photography.

This was a bit of a rushed job and I hadn't aligned the scope as well as I could have but still managed to get a nice colourful shot of the great nebula. It was shot with my Nikon DSLR with 300mm lens piggy backed on the scope, a single exposure of 165secs at F5.6. The picture was very orange with light pollution before it was edited but I am now getting quite good with Photoshop's levels tool and can bring out the best in these shots, another time I will try stacking several shots.

I also think I'm letting myself down by using Alt-Az tracking instead of using polar alignment too, I've never done that yet but will try soon. If you look at the larger version of the picture you will notice the top right stars have almost no trailing but the stars bottom left have a lot; my guess is that's because Alt-Az mode doesn't compensate for celestial rotation, hopefully Polar mode will fix that.

First attempt at stacked images - M45, M2 & M31 (25/9/2006)

Twas a lovely September night and I set myself up with a comfy chair and some beers in the garden etc. Patience and something else to do while the camera is exposing is vital here I think, that is unless you have the luxury of being able to control the scope remotely from indoors with CCD imaging etc. As I haven't managed to get any success with the LPI yet I am doing all my pictures with my Nikon D50 DSLR & 300mm lens (F5.6) piggy back mounted on top of the scope. Note that the telescope itself has a much larger focal length of 1470mm but a lower aperture of F14 so bigger zoom but less sensitivity, hopefully in the future I will be able to make use of this.

Each of these shots was 10 x 30 second exposures stacked using exclude transparency in Photoshop (as I couldn't seam to get Registax to work). Certainly with the shot of M31 you can see loads more detail come out as you stack the pictures, the original shots don't really show anything except the central brightest area. You can also see Andromeda's two companion galaxies in this shot.

Moon session with my Nikon cam piggy-back mounted on the scope (9/9/2006)

Just a few days after the moon shot below I was out again doing the same thing. As I say below; the t-mount does seam to loose some light but this picture has a lot better colour and definition though perhaps less contrast than the picture below.

Again this is two consecutive pictures stiched togather as the Moon is too big for the FOV (field of view) of the 1470mm telescope. The terminator on the top right edge looks nice and clear with plenty detail but the left side of the Moon has very little depth and shows almost no shadowing, I know this is due to the fall of the Suns light but maybe I can do better with stacking or something. The pictures were 100th of a second shots.

 

 

First session with my Nikon cam t-mounted on the scope (5/9/2006)

I have just got an Astro-engineering piggy back mount and Meade t-mount for my Nikon DSLR so I was eager to try them out. The night was well lit by a near full moon so I didn't get the chance to use the piggy back on this occasion. When the Nikon D50 is mounted on the back of the telescope it adds a lot of weight to the back and the scope only just holds it, when the camera is piggy backed it seams fine.

The t-mount connects as if it was a lens on the camera and then screws into the rear of the scope. Then with a flip of the mirror you are viewing the telescopes magnification through the viewfinder of the camera as if it was a lens but without auto-focus or metering off course. One thing that I noticed was the t-mount seams to loose some light and gets darker towards the outside, rather than the pure bright white I see through the eye pieces; the light reaching the camera seamed quite dulled. Also it is very difficult to focus the telescope, firstly because I don't have a remote focuser yet so you cause vibrations when you handle the focus knob, but also because it's hard to see accurately through the viewfinder of the camera. I was taking a picture and then checking it on the cameras screen and zooming in to see if the fine detail was clearly focused, trial and error.

This was not the best night for the moon as it was near full but still I had to try it. This shot is actually 90% one picture and the top 10% pasted on from a second shot, when viewing the moon on my Nikon D50 through the ETX 105 it can only fit about 90% in the frame. The full size picture is half of the cameras actual resolution but it isn't focused well enough to make it the full shot worthwhile.

Day five - can I see those clusters from home? (29th August 2006)

It was a pretty clear sky so I set the scope up outside the backdoor. I just went with simple settings and didn't do it as accurately as it should be as it was just a mess around session. Even with the light pollution from streetlights etc I did manage to see the M2 and M13 clusters again, plus one other cluster I think but forgotten which. M31 was easy too but not particularly impressive, to be honest I thought the clusters were more defined and a nicer sight. Using the 2x Barlow again.

Dark skies make a lot of difference (19th August 2006)

The first telescope session up at our favourite night sky location by Colleton near Brixham, the best place for the least light pollution around my area. My friend also brought a borrowed ETX 125 so we had our first star party!

It was a fairly good night so we both went through the telescope alignment procedure, both of us for the first time. After a few attempts we had the scopes aligned best we could and ready for action. The obvious thing to try first was the 'tonight's best' guided tour and as there were no planets visible at that time the first deep sky objects to come up were two globular clusters, M2 and M13.

For both (very similar) star clusters; my scope slewed up and settled on the spot it thought the cluster was at but upon looking down the eye piece there was nothing to be seen; luckily these clusters are just of a high enough magnitude (approx. magnitude 6) to be seen though the guide viewfinder on the scope as small round blurry patches. With the viewfinder as a guide I could then slew to the object itself and see it in the main eye piece. The view was great, though just a fuzzy ball of light; it does get a little detail when you look slightly away from the brightest part, together with a little imagination we were very happy indeed!

The other obvious object to try was the M31 Andromeda Galaxy but it was a bit washed out and not as impressive as the clusters.

Day three - just enjoying the view (12th August 2006)

A pleasant nights observations when Paul n Mark were here for a jam, just using the telescope without the electronics, sat in the garden looking at the moon in great detail as it was approximately half moon. I did try the LPI imager on the computer but all I got was a blurry mess; my LPI doesn't seam to have the right attachment; not sure what's going there on but I'm working on it.

First session with the LPI and laptop (10th August 2006)

The moon was up so I tried some LPI shots from the laptop, just using the imaging side of the software and without the scope switched on. I found it very difficult to get an accurate focus which was made doubly hard by the low spec of my current laptop; 366mhz with 64mb ram! I also have a problem with my LPI fitting the eye piece holder and had to bodge it into place using a piece of tape! Perhaps this is the main reason why these pictures are not very good, anyway it's all learning at the moment...

First light! Like a kid on Christmas morning (5th August 2006)

After picking up my new telescope we headed to Runnage Farm on Dartmoor for a small weekend music festival. The weather was not ideal for the night sky at all on the first day though we did catch a glimpse of the Moon through the clouds which wet the appetite for more.

The Saturday evening provided a little more black sky and a brief opportunity to view Jupiter, the most obvious observation was 4 of it's moons immediately visible in an approximately flat plane with the planet. Cloud cover soon ruined that.

During the night the clouds parted and the stars came out, it wasn't quite as black as we hoped partly due to light pollution coming from the campsite itself but the opportunity had to be taken. With no experience of the autostar computer guidance I figured it wasn't a good time to learn and so just set the scope up without anything to complicate things. From my DSLR photography of the night sky I know how to find M31 (The mighty Andromeda galaxy) with the naked eye so I just pointed the scope in the general direction of the galaxy and scanned about with the viewfinder. After only a minute I had found the large blur in the sky that is our closest neighbour galaxy. Andromeda is actually one of our local group of companion galaxies of which there are about 14, therefore it is the largest in the night sky; the whole detailed spiral system spans around the width of a full moon!

I found that the sight through the telescope was best using the 2x Barlow eye piece and was clearly the same spiral galaxy as I have seen in so many photos but without the detail of the spiral arms etc. It did look like just a fuzzy patch in the sky and was taking up more wide angle than the eye piece could show. Still, a great moment and satisfaction knowing my journey beyond this solar system was now officially underway! We retired to our tents very happy.