21:00 – 23:00
My second night at the villa with the family. I’ve taken my Sharpstar 61 refractor with me this time with an effective focal length of 272mm. I normally use this a my guider for the Esprit 100 or 120. And I’ve placed it on the AM5 and have attached the trusty 50mm Skywatcher guide scope to it.
Ready to image
Luke has helped me setup this evening after managing to have an accident yesterday which caused me to have butterfly stitches to my shin 🤦♂️
So after about an hour of setting up, finding focus, working out the focal length and polar aligning we have set off to test the first image from this little setup. The FoV is 4.94 x 3.30 degrees.
Plate solve of the first image
NGC 7000 the North American Nebula that is almost overhead, thus removing problems with the pool lights that I have not yet worked out how to turn off.
We are taking 12 x 5mins with the ZWO ASI2600MC colour camera, cooled to -10 as the temperature outside is a balmy 21 degrees C.
Single 5min exposure
Once done I will call it a night as I really need to turn off those pool lights.
Screenshot of 5min exposure
Darks – 6 x 300s
Flats – 12 x 0.35s
Single Flat