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Awful scope on a nice mount
I just picked up a new mount but don’t have the dovetail rail for my SCT yet, so I just figured out how to clamp my $60 refractor onto it to learn how it works. I captured the Pleiades and a random bit of sky that happened to be full of faint stars.
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Whirlpool Galaxy
Got about 20 minutes of exposure for M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. About 31 million light-years away. M51 is the big spiral galaxy, and M51b is the smaller galaxy interacting with it. I’m very excited about the amount of detail in the spirals and the different color visible in the cores.
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M46 and NGC 2438
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M46, NGC 2438 and M42
This is only a small portion of open cluster M46, and it contains planetary nebula NGC 2438 (which is much closer, and only in M46 by coincidence) in the shot. And another shot of M42 because it’s big and bright and pretty.
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M1 and M42
I took a few quick stacks of M1 and M42. M1 was cut short by light clouds illuminated by a full moon, so once again I don’t have a good long exposure of it.
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Full Moon
Seeing was pretty bad, so these aren’t as crisp as my last set, but I figured they were still good enough to keep.
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Jupiter/Venus Conjunction
I was out the evening of the conjunction, but packed up my little telescope and managed to grab a picture from a parking lot!
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Moon, near first quarter
I got a lot of time observing the moon waxing around 42%, and a week later have finally processed the captures. On the sharpest ones I think I have below 1km surface resolution, which is far better than I realized was possible! I captured three Apollo sites in these images too:
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M1, M36, and M42
A descent night of observing, although the occasional cloud passed by. I tried getting some galaxies in as well but the corrector plate was frosted over by then.
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NGC2634, just barely
I captured 11 minutes of galaxies NGC2634 and NGC2634A. They’re faint and fuzzy, I’m not sure how much detail is possible through the light pollution here. They’re circumpolar, so they are out all night. I might try setting up in the back yard where I can see them early on and do a much longer […]
