Clear Skies!

Yes, some amazing summer weather and lovely clear skies for most of last week, so I had a go at a couple of targets.

First I thought I’d attempt the North American Nebula (NGC7000). It’s a fairly large target, but not easy to pinpoint as it doesn’t really show up in any test shots and it’s also notoriously tricky to pull out of the data. So I was pleasantly surprised at this result shot at 140mm. I had just over two hours of data before some cloud rolled in.

So after acheiving this one, I wanted to try again but with a slightly wider view as there is so much nebulosity in the whole area.

I managed about 3.5 hours at 100mm – this time thwarted from any more shooting by the sky brightening and turning blue! Shooting time at the moment is really only from about 11pm until 3am!

So after two very successful nights of shooting, I decided to go for the hat-trick! I’d read that the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) was of interest at the moment as a Supernova (expoding star) had become visible in the past few weeks (of course the explosion actually happened about 20million years ago, but we’ve only now been able to see it!

This spiral galaxy is quite an ambitious target with my kit – very high in the sky, near the ‘Big Dipper’, which does affect tracking with my setup because the galaxy’s arc of rotation is quite small and also I think my tracker struggles a bit with the weight balance of the camera pointing straight up.

But having located where I hoped it would be and taking some test shots I was just about able to make out a tiny faint blob, so assumed this was it. It turns out I was right.

A very pleasing result. The galaxy isn’t very large in the frame and couldn’t really be cropped any closer without reducing the quality, but it makes a good image nonetheless.