From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: October 31, 2010 5:36:43 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] NGC 7331 and friends..

P.S. I want to try a few runs with the mount "as is" to see what results. Then I can have a go at adjusting the weights or slight polar misalignment in Alt etc. or both before taking the covers off & playing with the screws inside. I mean I have no idea what adjustment counts for what until I actually experiment..! 

The weather has rather retarded my progress lately though..

Mark.

On 01/11/2010, at 7:58 AM, milton_aupperle wrote:

Hi Folks;

I managed to image the "Deer Lick Galaxy Cluster" centered on NGC 7331:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/DSO/NGC7331_MJA_20101030.jpg

last night. C8 @ 1150 mm Fl, Astro Don LRGB filters using Cooled Grasshopper with 15 min Luma (1x1 binned) and then binned 2x2 R 6 min, G 4 min and blue 3 min. Total of 2.3 hours of exposures. The image is 1.25 arc seconds per pixel.

I had very stable skies (FWHM 3.5 to 4.5 arc seconds), with fairly dark skies (about 17,000 ADU sky background with 15 minute exposures and a LPR filter) initially. The tracking log and graph were basically "flat" for a change. I had 10 second periods where there were no guiding corrections needed at all, so Astro IIDC was correcting for the mount, not chasing turbulence for a change.

Thin cloud kept drifting in from the west and I cut short my attempt at imaging M74, as it was basically lost in the increasing light pollution / clouds.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle