Last night I went out in the freezing
cold, on wunderground it said it was 9°F but
feels like -1°F. I still couldn't resist the urge to put the
telescope out and enjoy the sky. Dedication, or crazy. You decide.
I originally planned on getting Mars as
the prediction for astronomical seeing wasn't too bad. When I
magnified Mars a bit it was definitely not picture worthy conditions.
I tracked Mars along for a while through the scope noticing the polar
cap.
After Mars I decided to see what my
scope could do with 75% moon's worth of light and a galaxy, two
galaxies actually. Since they're so close together figure it would be
a nice site. I have imaged M81 and M82 previously with my Astromaster
114EQ with the motor drive and the camera bracket afocal. This time
with my Omni XLT 150 it was a bit more difficult to image since I was
turning the RA knob by hand, which isn't the easiest thing to do. I
took about 10 pictures, but only 5 stacked. Can't complain, I didn't
expect anything useable from it.
M81 & M82 5x15sec F3.1 ISO400. Hand tracked.
I expect with prime focus imaging, and
a motor to track an object this is going to take some really good
images.
After going in a couple times to warm
up, I noticed the constellation Hercules was coming up. This
constellation is home to a couple globular clusters, but what I
wanted to see was Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad which is currently between
Hercules and Draco. I attempted to image this while hand tracking the
telescope, but came up with nothing but a blurry blob (not a fuzzy
blob like I want) and star trails.
Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad. Single image.
I'm thinking that this was hard to see due to it still being low on the horizon - about 35° above the horizon - and also due to the 75% moon making it harder to see. Have plenty of time coming up where I will be able to do this comet a lot better. So keep your eyes open for that update sometime in the future. Garrad is my first comet, so I'm excited about what I can achieve with more pictures to stack.
Comments