M45 - Pleiades

Well, half of it.

I've had a good clear early evenings for the last few days and have put it to good use by working on the alignment of my scope. I can now get good 60 second prime focus shots south of zenith. As is easily done I left the LED on my polar alignment scope on over night and now need new batteries. With the better weather I shall build a pier and then work on a shed to go round it. Anyone built a metal pier before?

Anyway, here is the photo. For the first time I've seen the nebulosity. Don't know how Patrick Moore et al make such excellent astro-drawings of anything. I'm blind to all of it and need the photos.

Removing a dark rid the photo of hot spots but also of most of the nebulosity and its colour. So I post-processed it first and then removed the dark.



Maybe tonight I'll get the other half and splice the photos together.

I took photos of the Andromeda galaxy and Comet Machholz. Looked great on the camera screen but full of eggs on the pooter. They are too far north. Better alignment needed still.

Hi James,
Thats not a bad image, some nebulosity is clearly visible around the star to the middle right. the blue overall glow is nice.
Regarding your question on piers, I built one a number of years ago, its a steel poll, 10 inches wide, 0.5 inches thick and 6 feet long.
Half the pier is below the floor and can be filled in it with concrete if vibration were to be a problem.
I welded a 16x16x1 inch plate on each end and bolted it into soled concrete which sits on bed rock and had it roughly pointing north
I then used threaded bar to attach a second plate to the top, so I could get an exact level, I then put on a meade superwedge for the scope to sit on, the scope can also go altaz on this pillar.
I'll cut back the thread bar when I'm finally happy with the scope height.
I ran a conduit for cable up through the hollow pier, so there are no cable on the floor to trip over.
Heres a pic with the etx 70 sitting on it.

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...254-Pillar+ETX70.jpg

The pillar was galvanised and painted with black hammerite, damping is less then a second, you can happly lean against it while observing with no wobble or vibration.
It probabily over engineered, but thats not a bad thing, its better then the opposite.
I also packet the inside of the pillar with sand for good luck

Ummm, okay. Looks like I'll be signing up for the welding course at my local school. Will make sure the teacher does a good job of showing me how he welds a plate to a tube and then take it home. Worth the E85.

I should clarify, that I didn't weld it, it was done at a local engineering company. I "had someone else" weld a 16x16x1........
typo on my part :oops:
I tried it before and it takes alot of practice, otherwise you'll end up with a big mess

James,
tha is a good shot. I'd have to say though, that won't it be tricky to try and splice 2 images from 2 different conditions together? While it would be great to see the results, it will be hard to get it bang on! Dave is right about the nebulosity - it does come out very well on that central star.

Dave,
I like the work you have done there. It is simple yet a very effective design of mount, with the way you have for levelling it etc. Shame you don't have a dome for it yet...



Seanie.

Seanie,
I was only out today giving it a new coat of black paint, its in good condition,
I took in the wedge about a month ago and sanded off any rusty areas, which was on just some of the bolts, a small job.
We'll see about the dome.

you might argue that a 3 bolt system would have been better for the pier, but I prefer 4, just for the more stability it provides.
I took off the top plate today and its very deceptively heavy..