Last Saturday was a fine night! I was able to image plenty of objects mainly due to longer time that the sky was clear. A bit hazy in the early evening, clouds came & went quickly, but overall it was a good night. First object was the Rossette Nebula. This is a huge nebula in Monoceros, almost filling up the entire field of my camera. However, clouds and poor transparency ruined the frames so I thought I will have to try it again later. I immediately slewed my scope towards Sombrero galaxy, but this time I was not able to locate it. Somehow, I got envious of my colleagues who got a go-to system. Next target was my favorite galaxy-M101-the other pinwheel galaxy. Here I made 5 frames. It was a pain to locate a suitable guidestar for the M101. I eventually settled for the star Dubhe which is quite far from the galaxy. As expected, I noticed some star trails on the images. Irving pointed out Comet Lulin on his scope so I tried imaging my second comet. It was large & bright so I had no trouble locating it on my Megrez 90. After that, I returned to Irving's scope and looked at a bright galaxy. I later found out that it was M83, the so-called Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. I hurriedly returned to my scope and began imaging M83. Last to image was the Owl Nebula. I was surprised to find a companion galaxy to the owl. Very impressive. Wow! I wish the future imaging sessions would be this satisfying!
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