Galaxies, a Comet and an Owl

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!

Flaming Horsehead

It's been a while since I last posted. Last Saturday, we went to the Spring of Life campsite to try observing and imaging the heavens. Coming from a children birthday party, I proceeded directly to Irving's place to pick him up with his telescope. We arrived at the site at around 5:30 p.m. Brian and his friend were already there. I quickly set up my scope and tried drift alignment while the moon was still up. First target was the Horsehead & Flame Nebulae. I used 3 min X 14 for the exposures. Finally, I was able to test my autoguiding set-up. It worked very well and I was very satisfied with the performance. When I was about to turn-off the Guidedog, the computer suddenly crashed. Oh boy, was I afraid that I might never recovered the files. It took me a long time to seached the files but found it later on. After that, I point my scope towards M51 Whirlpool Galaxy. However, I found difficulty finding a suitable guidestar. Then the clouds covered the northers sky until we decided to pack-up and head home. It was a good and fulfilling night!