My Astrotrac Advenuture

I knew there was issues. and in fairness to Astrotrac they have been trying to address them.
Maybe i was just unlucky

The images are getting better!
Ill have that polar scope sorted as soon as they open up

Good Morning and Happy new year.

Despite the forecast last night the skies did clear, and i was out in the garden to hear the bells ring in 2014.

I was observing Jupiter in the cracking 20x80 Bionos I won from this site (Thanks again Carl)

This is for me the major reason I got an Astrotrac, set up. I took me 5 mins to get the tripod trac and camera and get it aligned. Its not perfect, I need to get a new Polar Scope (Thanks again Stephen) to really push the limits.

I took a shot of M81 and M82 with an old Pentacon Lens (135mm f2.8, and the result was really bad. the lens is soft at 2.8 with pronounced CA.

This is the shot. 30 x 60 second shots.

www.astrobin.com/70369/

I may return to this lens and step it down to f4 and see if its any better.

While using Jupiter as a target to focus the camera I saw an open cluster to the left of the frame in the test shot.
A little digging in Stellarium showed this to be M44 Beehive Cluster in Cancer. So before the clouds rolled in i managed to shoot 20 X 30 second frames. 20 Darks and 20 Bias

all stacked in DSS and tweeked in CS6

www.astrobin.com/70367/

I am going to spend the next few cloudy nights reading up on DSS, all my images seem to loose colour when im processing.

new polar scope due today.

now if the clouds and the moon would just oblige and go away please.

New Polar scope arrived last week, just in time for the rain.
I was just unlucky with the first one, this one is perfect. And i had no problems getting it replaced.

attached is a shot at m82 and the recent supernova, the lens really let me down. The whole left side is badly misaligned.

Well a cheap lens will do that !

Got about 2 hours of clear skies last night before, the cold and the Derby got me back inside.

Last night i moved the astrotrac to the 2 o clock position on the wedge as advised and put a 72mm WO Apo on the gearhead with the 60D attached.

as i forgot my timer i was reduced to 30 second exposures. But i did not mind.

Polar alignment was much better and the new polar scope is making life so much easier.

I am finding the gear head a bit difficult to coax into the position in want for the shot, i kind of look like im hugging it at times.
Doing all this in my north facing driveway is resulting in more twitching curtains than normal

link below is M81 and M82

16 x 30 second shots
16 Darks
16 Bias Frames

Stacking in DSS with minimal adjustments in Lightroom.

id really like to learn how to stretch out the curves in Photoshop, if anyone knows a good place on the web for doing this ?

www.astrobin.com/75129/