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Imaging Report - Area51 on July 9th, 2008
by J. Manuel Briseño Hi Group, After all, the weather cooperated and we could do some astrophotography. I arrived around 7:30PM, with me also was: Fred, Bob, Ed and Jay. It was a clear night and we could see the Milky Way all above us, we had some clouds from time to time but in general it was clear. At had some issues with the polar alignment (typical). I know that this something with the version of the firmware of my scope since it is not the latest but I don’t want to upgrade, otherwise I will lose of the PEC and SMT data. Therefore I did 2 star alignments and then do iterations. The main objective was to test my camera. I had some objects in mind, my first one was The Crescent Nebula (NGC6888), but with my configuration it was very small. I decided to slew to the South I tried some of the Nebulas.
Trifid Nebula and Open Cluster
Lagoon Nebula and Globular Cluster
I also tried North American and the Elephant Nebula. This object requires 8 or 9 minutes, I will do it in my next session with better polar alignment. It was 3:00AM so I decided to experiment with M31, Andromeda Galaxy. I rotated the camera, check focus and test exposures of 240 seconds and 360 seconds. Since it is a bright object what do you think will be the correct exposure? (4 or 6) By the time I was on the 6th cloud covered the sky so I had to stop this and start packing. You can see the partial results here: 
Andromeda Galaxy
This is going to be a good challenge for the next session. I arrived home by 5:00AM tired but with my 2 pictures as a birthday present. ;-) Clear skies
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