Managed to grab an hour under the stars tonight, I went for M104 – The Sombrero Galaxy. I got 4X10 min subs before the clouds rolled in, it was also very low on the horizon and in danger of disheartening behind the neighbors houses!
Still, an image is an image and for only 40 mins I’m pretty pleased with how this has come out – need to add it to the list for Spring 2019….
This was taken the same night as the Beehive image below – A lot happier with this image than the M51 taken earlier last week, focus is correct this time! Due to clouds I only got a couple of hours and now its snowing so doubt I will get any more for the next week or so at least.
Grabbed some more data the night after, think Im done with this target for now.
Went out last night to try and get the motor focuser and Focusmax working better – I redid the V-Curves and the PID is now around 3 rather than 12. I also changed it to focus outwards rather than inwards. I was in the area of Castor and was looking for something to check the autofocussing routine was working correctly when I spotted the Beehive Cluster….
I am really disappointed in this image, I managed to recover it and its not bad but it is out of focus for some reason…. I have built a motor focuser (MyFocuserPro2) and it seems to be working fine so am not sure what went wrong last night. Anyway, this is around 4hr in 10 minute subs, its not gonna win any awards but its an image, the first of 2018!
I have taken a few images since October but not posted them – work it very hectic at the moment and I also broke the motor in my focuser so am waiting on that being fixed. Im changing the focuser and going for a belt and pulley system which will allow me to get the correct ratio with the new motor I have.
Anyway, here are the images I have taken over the past couple of months, nothing aware winning, but they are not too bad!
Just a quick M45 11 5 min subs. The moon was bright so this was really to check that my new electronic focuser actually worked – Judging by the star spikes I think I can safely say the focuser works well!
Not my greatest image but was trying out my new DIY focuser and thought the perfect target to test focus was a Globular Cluster. The focus is bang on, however the collimation is out!
Had a couple of clear nights so decided to image M33 through my SCT to get in nice and close! 3hrs in 15min subs@1.2m 
Im sure this is my first image every autumn! M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, a lovely planetary nebula high up at the moment in the summer triangle. This was taken with my 200mm SCT reduced down to F6.3/1300mm. The images are all 5 min subs and there are 31 gathered over 3 nights at the end of August.
Taken on 2nd Jan 2017, stack of 32 images….
