Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Wow, I haven't posted here since April 12. So, I'll be catching up with some of the my better DSO images acquired over the last five months. A really fun thing about this hobby is when despite owning your hardware for five years you learn a couple of things that make a significant difference. First I recently realized that after doing an All Star Polar Alignment I should realign on the Polar alignment star for better go to pointing accuracy. Also helpful is to display the polar alignment before adjusting it.  The signs of the displayed angles tell you which way to move the tilt and azimuth if the star has not in your finder's field.

The following were acquired 5/14/2021 and averaged from 10 x 2 min exposures using Celestron 8/Starizona Night Owl 0.4x focal reducer and ASI294MC Pro. 

Messier 51 (The Whirlpool Galaxy)
 
Messier 63 (The Sunflower Galaxy)

NGC 4631 (The Whale Galaxy)