Just to let ye know that I'm not all comfy in my warm armchair over here in Denmark.
I went out with a friend, just to my back yard, but it is really nice a dark to the south and west of my place. The east is not so good, but it is certainly okay. Much better than Corbally
Anyways, I set up the AstroTrac TT320 and my Nikon D200 as well as several lenses. I had bought a used Tokina 400mm f/5.6 which I was looking forward to trying out.
We kept is short since the ladies were waiting inside (after all, I do need a remote observing site, I see that now). We had a look through 10x50 binoculars at M42, M31, the Plejades, Venus and the Moon, and some ol regular stuff. (My friend knows nothing about the night sky). The Milky Way was also visible although not very bright. But still, not bad for a back yard view!
I also got the AstroTrac going despite the fact that the battery in the polar scope was dead, leaving it difficult to polar align the thing properly. But I did manage 30s exposures without any problems and even 2 min were ok.
Here's M31. Three 30s composite. As simple as could be, i.e. JPEG straight out of camera, no post processing except align/stack and a small curves adjustment in PS. (I didn't want to spend too much time since the polar alignment was off. Next time I'll take bias and dark frames to match and process them all properly).
3x30s, ISO 1600. Nikon D200 with Tokina AT-X 400mm @ f/5.6. (Crop from 10Mpix to 800x600):
I also have 9 30s exposures of M42 but not stacked yet. The orange glow from the light polution was showing so I need to tweak those images a bit before I can post them.
Happy new year to all of you.
/Mikkel
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