Wide Field imaging and MM practice

So, the Messier Marathon was supposed to happen this weekend but we were clouded out both Friday and Saturday. Sunday night was clear and moonless so I figured I get some MM practice time in, as well as shoot some widefield shots of constellations. So off to YFOS I went.

I was, of course, running late, but this was part of the MM practice. How much time does it take from when I get to the site until I am fully set up and aligned?

It turns out that that is 45 minutes, seem pathetically slow but I'll just have to take that into account. Then again, it will be much easier to get to Larry's by dusk for a DST MM in April. I wish I had measured how much time it took until I was aligning, because that initial setup time can happen while it is still light, but does it really matter? As a test, I only used 2 calibration stars for speed. That cuts some time off. (I choose two only because after I did the first one, the GoTo to the second one was pretty darn close.)

I check out M42, but the transparency seems pretty poor, not much detail could be seen. This was also true of looking up at the stars themselves, there didn't seem to be all that many.

So I took my Canon A610 and attached it with a bracket to my counter weight bar. This is something I got on Astromart months ago. Tonight would be the first time I was using it. I took some shots of the Orion Constellation, then the bottom part of the constellation, and then a shot with the Pleiades in it. The A610 can take 15 second frames with 15 second dark frames. I set it to take 10 of these in continuous mode. A manually focused on infinity. I did play around with the ISO setting but sadly the EXIF data does not record that! This is a real shame because one of the shots I took was rather nice and I have no idea what settings I used. I forgot how to set aperture on so I just used whatever the camera was set to.

Just as I was in the middle of shooting, Gardner and Rich showed up for MM marathon of their own. I was glad, I really don't like being at YFOS alone.

Here's a full frame shot of the bottom of Orion. (Click the image to see the full size one.)

Now here is a 100% crop of the sword.

I also tried using Registax to see what it could do with 10 frames. Here it is:


To me this is odd, it didn't do much at all. I was a little disappointed with this. But anyways, it was fun. Here's the shot that turned out best of all.

You can see the Pleiades in the middle upper left, the Hyades Cluster of Taurus in the upper left, Aldebaran showing its orange color. Mirfak and the Alpha Persei Cluster are in the center right, and bright Capella owns the upper right. (You really need to click this one to see anything...)

I do wish there were more stars. This was the best shot of the evening and I don't know how I made it. I know I'll being trying this again and I appreciate any advice.

The haze was getting worse and we all retired to the warming hut to chat a bit. We probably stayed about 15-20 minutes and we checked the sky again and it was getting better.

Gardner was really fighting dew with his binoculars but Rich seemed to be doing wel with his Pronto. Just as I was about to pack it up, he called out that he got M1. Now I've tried for this before with binoculars from Manchester and failed everytime, I wanted to see it. So I punched it into the hand controller and hey, there it was! I was tired so I didn't look much.

I tried for a quick succession of M objects that I knew were in the sky. Bang, they all were there, must have gotten half a dozen in about 2 minutes. It does seem like a Goto scope, once it is setup, really makes short work of a Messier Marathon! ("And yes, I realize that this isn't necessarily the point, just let me enjoy what I do, ok?," he said a bit testily...)

I had to be at work the next day so I reluctantly started tearing down the equipment. By the time I was done the haze had cleared and the skies were gorgeous.

Of course...