From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: February 13, 2010 8:45:17 AM MST

To: astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: guiding..M 42 etc.

Hi Milton (& others),

I set-up the GPUSB with Astro IIDC guiding but had no luck acquiring any bright stars with the DBK 21AF04.AS. I`d begun with a 3 star on Rigel, Aldebaran &

calibration star Procyon on the other side of the meridian. Perhaps I should have tried Canopus, it might have given me a wider model of the sky? I slewed back to Aldebaran & put the Antares f6.3 FR on & the DBK. I wasn`t getting anything at all with the FWHM/ HFM selected until I turned the brightness right up & didn`t succeed in finding even an out of focus image of Aldebaran or anything else. I tried swapping for the eyepiece & both focused & slightly defocused stars (also different regions with more stars in the FOV of the finder & adjusting the binning, I think). Perhaps I never quite got the exposure right enough? So I went for the Scorpion first with the f6.3 FR then with the Mogg 0.3 attached & eventually found a very big out of focus Betelgeuse with 4 x 4 binning. Here`s a stacked image of it...

I then connected the GPUSB, centred Betelgeuse using the reticle in Astro IIDC & tried some very inexperienced guiding. Basically I left the settings as they were already, callibrated, then began tracking. The star drifted below the reticle gradually & I left it running for several minutes. Here`s the log..

After that I tried slewing to M 42 again & without adjusting with the finder took a 2 minute & a couple of 4 minute exposures (I got the darks a bit confused with the 4 minute ones though..) Here`s the result with the 2 minute one. I was pleased I got some sort of nebulousity showing this time;

This is unguided of course...

Mark.