My First Tracked DSO!

Great Orion Nebula. 45 second exposure taken with Nikon D70 and Nikkon 80-200mm VR Zoom Lens at F2.8 200m. Minimal image processing on JPG - will do properly later from NEF/RAW.
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Er... It's pretty big isn't it...

...and that's without the telescope!



OMG - Its big! Practised setting up my AP900 this afternoon. Also managed to attach the Nikon D70 + 80-200 VR Zoom Telephoto to the 8"mounting plate - so in theory could do some tracked shots now. Problems:- a) need to get it outside! b) going to be hard to level the pier I think c) cloudy d) need to figure out polar aligning
(c) Ethan Pinnell 2004

plate
(c) Ethan Pinnell 2004

New telescope mount

Picked up my new telescope mount - an Astro-Physics AP900 GTO. The picture was taken shortly before we removed it from its current home on a pier - I'm going to use it on portable pier
(c) Ethan Pinnell 2004

Comet Machholz on 100105
(c) Ethan Pinnell 2004

Comet Machholz on New Years Day

Picture taken as 23:53 on 01/01/05 from Worcester Park, London. Very light polluted location.





Pleiades is top middle. Comet Machholz is green smudge 3/4 way down just left of middle.

TIF edited in ACDSee 7 - unsharp mask, then levels, then resized, then levels again then saved as JPG.



Here's a closeup of the comet with levels adjusted (only) to show amount of noise then saved as JPG





Here's the closeup of comet cropped and saved as JPG





Here's the closeup of comet cropped, levels adjusted and saved as JPG