Report 09/10/011

Saturday, 10 September 2011 13:32

Colin and I had been checking the CSC just before and during last night's monthly meeting of the RASC Winnipeg Centre and decided that maybe we could squeeze in a couple hours of observing/imaging.  Our friend Amy joined us as well.

What started out being a plan for "just a couple of hours", ended up being a very comfortable six hour session under the stars.   The weather was warm.  The sky was (mostly) clear.  Mosquitoes were (almost) non-existant.  The auroral displays were fantastic.

I think we finally packed in for the night after Colin's DSLR drained its battery for the second time sometime around 4am.

For my part, after some of the issues i had encountered at SWSP with my mount, and all the "digital noise" problems with my DSLR which I've been struggling with for the better part of the last 18 months, I decided to dedicate the evening (because of the nearly full moon) to nailing down resolutions to both the polar alignment issues, as well as falling back to an older model of Pentax DSLR.

The result?  An image of the Pleiades.  Apart from a "framing" issue as well as a few dust donuts (between Alcyone and Merope), the time I spent ironing out technical issues was well spent.

A couple of thank you's are owed to a couple of members for this image:

• Thank you to Gord T. for your help/guidance on drift alignment!
• Thank you to Colin M. for the company last night (and during most of our imaging sessions)!
• Thank you to Kevin B. for your help refining the imaging parameters for my "old" Pentax K10D (since the K20D is too noisy for long exposures)!