Then there's been the weather. I've had 2 reasonably clear nights this month, the rest has been terrible. I didn't realise how bad it was here in the Hutt in spring. Hopefully things will start to improve next month.
Most of the targets I'm after at the moment don't rise about the trees until after 1am, so I need to get used to not sleeping much.
Charl -- last night I photographed this group of galaxies while waiting for Orion to rise. So here's a handful out of the 2 trillion to be going on with. The big one is the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, 56 million light years that-away. Within this shot there's probably at least a trillion stars. My field of view isn't wide enough to get the rest of the galaxies in this cluster, though.
At 2am this morning I aimed the scope at the Horsehead Nebula for the very first time. The first 100 images were out of focus, I managed about 200 in focus, then my scope mount crashed. Never done that before, I hope it isn't a new ongoing issue. The image needs about 5 times the exposure time, which at this rate will take all of November to get.
In the 6 months I've had the scope I've yet to get a proper image, with plenty of exposure time. I have a thingie arriving from Amazon which will let me piggy-back my SLR on the scope, so I'll spend some time with my 250mm zoom lens rather than the 1000mm scope, which may make things a bit easier for a beginner like me.
I am beginning to realise that my mount isn't really up to what I want it to do, but to get a good mount is $4000 to $10000. I'll keep persevering with what I've got.
