Ad Astra Observatory

Got a rare clear night. It’s only been clear about 3 times since Valentine’s Day this year. I decided to force myself to shoot some galaxies in Leo. To follow up the NGC 2903 shot, I tried M95/M96. These are just on the cusp of being a little too small for Veronica, but are worth more attention with the new C9.25.

The tracking on the G-11 works fine for about 45min, and then the wheels start falling off the bus. I don’t really understand it. Maybe there’s some flexure in the guidescope. So the tracking is a little off in the shots.

Here’s M95/M96:

Once I was done with that, it was getting late, but I wanted to try out M3. I’ve got a bunch of shots of M13, but M3 gets the short end of the stick.

I knew M3 would saturate with the normal 5-min images, so I shot it with 2min subframes instead. This is also unguided, because there are not a lot of bright stars in the area, and I also I was having guiding problems.

Here’s M3: