Jupiter 20091002

Yes, my C8i SE Single Armed Fork decided to take a break.  Ironically just after I got the CGE mount back!  The power wasn't getting to the hand controller just at the end of this session and the mount is on it's way to Celestron from out of warranty repair.  :(
Good news is the seeing was pretty good.
Not much else going on other than the Z-shaped / Zorro in the upper left!

Wish my mount a speedy recovery, The OTA will ride the CGE for a while... *sob* *sob* I'll have to one scope it for a while!  :)

Astronomy - Deep Sky - Clusters

Open and Globular

Waxing Gibbous Moon from 20090929

After my Pluto shots, I tried for the moon.  I've never really gotten a good full disk photo of the moon before.  Not one I liked at least.  I was even able to load the Canon raws (.CR2) into Registax 5 and stack 12 of the best ones.  AstraImaged for most of the detail and some touches in Iris and Gimp.  Hope you enjoy!

Pluto on three nigts in Sept 2009

I had to make a correction to the original finding based on 3 nights (Sept 12th, 21st and 29th, 2009. 

Here you'll see the positions of Pluto marked with small lines.  The animation will change the current position's line blue and then rotate back through.

I used...
Optics: Meade LXD55 6" Schmidt Newtonian OTA
Mount: CGE mount on JMI Wheely Bars
Camera: Canon XTi with Hutech LP Filter (LPS-P2-FF)
Focusing Aid: STI focuser
Shutter control: Hap Griffin long exposure cable
Software: MaximDL
Guiding: DMK21AF04 with a piggybacked 4" SkyWatcher via PHD and ASCOM drivers
Operating System: WinXP Lenovo T61
Pre-Processing: Iris per automated Jim Solomon's Cookbook
Post-Processing: Gimp

Animation made with Gimp.

I also found it interesting that Pluto at magnitude 14 is pretty bright (other stars are 15-16 or fainter).  Pluto is over 4.7 Billion Kilometers away or nearly 3 Billion Miles.

I wish I could find a way to balance the background across the varying nights conditions.  The last night I fought the tree tops!

Cropped

FULL

Astronomy - Solar System - Pluto - ALL

Messier 17 - Omega Nebula

  I think I could have benefited greatly from more subs on this one.  I ended up getting all .fits instead of raws on the 1st night.  The second night, MaximDL hung on downloading one of the raws, then the trees took over and I lost the autoguiding star.  I will try to add more sometime this season.  This nebula grabbed my interest simply because it was near Pluto (more on that object later).  I really like it.  Despite only 4 subs for a total of 14 min I think it came out well.

Stats

Optics: Meade LXD55 6" Schmidt Newtonian OTA
Mount: CGE mount on JMI Wheely Bars
Camera: Canon XTi with Hutech LP Filter (LPS-P2-FF)
Focusing Aid: STI focuser
Shutter control: Hap Griffin long exposure cable
Software: MaximDL
Guiding: DMK21AF04 with a piggybacked 4" SkyWatcher via PHD and ASCOM drivers
Operating System: WinXP Lenovo T61
Subs: Canon Raw 3x 180s @ ISO 1600 and 1x 300s @ ISO 800
Pre-Processing: Iris per automated Jim Solomon's Cookbook
Post-Processing: Levels, curves, selective gauss in Gimp alone.

Some additional subject details on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_17

Thanks,

Mike

2008 SCT-User Imaging Contest

http://www.darkatmospheres.com/contest/2008/
I came in 2nd place in this contest and won a great observing chair: http://www.buyastrostuff.com/store/Metal-astro-chair-frame-page.htm