Tim Printy's Astronomy journal

Went up to the dark sky site and was greeted by mosquitos followed by some fairly chilly temps (for late May).  Got things running pretty well but I noticed that my motor drive was not tracking well. The initial alignment indicated the Pole star was some 17' off, which I thought was pretty high.  After a bit of figuring things out, I realized my error.  The polar alignment scope has a small circle along line that goes towards the center of the field. I thought I was supposed to put polaris in the circle. I now realize I am supposed to put Polaris at the center of the circle!  When I did this, the scope reported my alignment was within 5' of the circle and all was well. The scope tracked well enough. It had some periodic error but was not significant. I guess I was fatigued and lost a lot of time trying to focus the 8". It was in focus all along but I am beginning to see that I have coma around the edges of the field. I bought a coma corrector many years ago from Celestron. I guess I will get some use out of it after all!  Here is a picture I took of the scope setup showing the 8" with Nikon D70 attached and the 90mm F11 guide scope I am using. The Meade mount handled the load without a complaint. It looks like the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

I shot a lot of piggyback stuff initially as I am trying to develop photographic finder charts for messier objects. I had to nail a few down before they disappeared behind the sun.  Twilight did not really end until 10:15 and I finally started shooting around 11PM.  I decided M65 and 66 would be the easiest to start with and I got fair results. I took two 5-minute exposures with NR and ISO800 but the first was not centered properly. I then took a 10-minute shot but the camera battery died during the NR and got a very noisy pic. I did not want to bother trying again and I was beat by then. Here is the pic. Not too bad and shows signs of good things to come.

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