Report - 02/20/2011

Monday, 21 February 2011 20:03

Last night was another fabulous night under the stars.  It felt good to get in almost 5 hours, especially under the cold winter skies.

The night was started during the late afternoon sunlight with a final attempt to align finderscopes, laser pointers and OTAs.  A reasonable success, although next time I do this, I will have to remember to properly counterweight the mount...

Colin and I again headed out together, this time around 7:30pm to do final setup, polar alignments and other related site configuration.  As usual, Colin was up and running with his full rig, even so far as imaging, within about 30 minutes or so.  I on the other hand, in an attempt to speed my normally hour-long setup process up, cheaped out on the polar alignment and ended up fighting with tracking all night.

I managed to get images of a number of objects last night, but must admit that I haven't yet had a chance to review or even process any of them.  Targets included M42, NGC2238, Saturn and the Moon.  

I took a number of shots of the moon in various exposure settings, in the hopes of trying out an HDR type image.

The two big conclusions for the night were
1) Don't rush the polar alignment.  On-board computers can only correct for so much.
2) An f/5.3 scope, no matter how much magnification you throw at it, is really not a great solution for 'planet-killing'

I'll post pictures in my gallery as soon as I can find the time to process images.