A night of learning, with quick and real dirty processing.

So while the rest of the Irish astro community was in the Midlands, I had to work. But the sky was clear at 02.30 AM so I took the scopes and mounts and camera and paraphenalia out to a local reasonably secure (patrolled) dark sky spot in Castletroy. All set up and taking subs at 03.00, and I kept going till dawn started to make it hard to get objects..

While the subs were being taken I was using my 8" newt with new 50mm RACI finder (I forgot how handy those can be) to do some old-school non-computerised starhopping to see some sights that I have not seen in decades.

Here are the quick and dirty stacks and only a cursory processing to get the colour balance and gamma about right. All images were with the Onyx 80ED, with SW 1.0x field flattener, on LXD-75, with 600D at ISO800 for 1 minute unguided exposures, with the clip-in CLS filter in place. I stacked only the non-trailed subs, averaged about 2/3 of every run was useful. 28 flats and 25 darks were taken during my takedown of the equipment.

M13 from 10 subs (nice propeller visible):


M27 from 25 subs:


M97 from 20 subs:


An attempt at Markarians chain, this one really needs deeper subs and lots more of them:


Not a bad haul for two hours. Next time I'll pick one object and try to get a few hours on it. I also really need to organise an autoguider and to mod the eg3-2 mount for autoguiding, but that'll be a summer project. That'll mean I'll be able to be self-contained for taking pics, guiding with the 70mm and taking subs with the 80mm all on its own, while I look around with another scope on the LXD instead of getting bored

Very nice images as you said try spending the night on one object. You’ll see a big difference in the signal to noise ratio when processing

Cathal

I agree with Carlo, and I learnt this lesson very quickly, despite the unpredictable weather in Ireland, try and focus on a single object, as much as it annoys me that I do not get enough time out with the gear due to weather and moon conditions, I have to obey that rule as much as possible too

Simon