Finally had a decent weekend night here. No Moon, decent seeing, unusually good transparency. Grabbed NGC5907 and M101. M101 has always been a challenging object for me; the images always appear “flat” when captured from my urban location. I spent more time than usual gathering data on this relatively dim extended object, hoping that the combination of more exposure time and lower-than-usual skyglow will make a difference. We’ll see what I get when I process that one. The other galaxy is a new target for me and I think it came out nicely.
The mount appeared to perform well. No wind and no discarded frames in several hours of steady work. It would have been a good night for some data gathering but I wanted to enjoy the unusually good conditions rather than doing work. Next time there’s decent seeing but a full Moon I’ll do it.
Larger version at http://www.cloudynights.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=27634&size=big