[AZ-Observing] Re: NGC1499 - California Nebula

  • From: "Brad Geisler" <bradley154@xxxxxxx>
  • To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:28:49 -0700

Mike,

Beautiful image, lots of data.

Curious if your shooting unguided with a good polar alignment or are you 
guiding and if so, with what scope and guider mounted to your C 11 ?

Nice work,

Brad Geisler
EVAC


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Wiles" <mikewilesaz@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <AZ-Observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 11:01 AM
Subject: [AZ-Observing] NGC1499 - California Nebula


Hello all,
A few weeks ago I made a pilgrimage to the holy site known as Starizona to
have Dean take a look at my CGE mount and tighten up some backlash issues on
the declination axis.  I left the mount with him and took my wife for some
unbelievably good BBQ about a mile away from Starizona.  As is his usual
ethic, by the time I returned Dean had essentially stripped and
reconstructed the entire mount and wasn't willing to give it back to me
until it met with his personal approval.  I got the mount home and it's not
even like the same piece of hardware anymore.  I liked it before...but it's
rock solid now.

Anyway, this past weekend was my first trip to a dark sky with the mount and
it performed flawlessly.  I was able to accomplish my goal of setting up a
series of exposures and letting the laptop use my C11 while I observed with
my other scope.  Overall a great night and I have a ton of data (167 useable
subs) to process that will probably take me a little while to work through.
Here is the first of those images for the group's enjoyment.

NGC 1499 - California
Nebula<http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6047/6282124766_4f444fcdc2_b.jpg>

As you may have deduced, it's an image of the California Nebula (NGC 1499)
shot from the Antennas site on 10/22/2011.  This is a composite of 15 subs
of 3 minutes each for a total integration time of 45 minutes.  I shot the
image with a QHY8PRO CCD camera attached to my Hyperstar equipped Celestron
11" Edge HD on a Starizona-cized CGE Mount.  Comments and criticisms are
welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike


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