Megrez 72 FD APO
C/2020 F3 Neowise
There’s once in a while a comet coming by and I missed some really good ones in my life… I thought I won’t let this one go by unnoticed … I took light gear with me in the car and off I went to the highest point in Folsom to overlook towards the eastern horizon. Fortunately I scouted a nice little area that is not surrounded by tall buildings around. The photos were taken with my William Optics Megrez 72 FD APO and a Canon EOS 50D camera. Various exposures from 2 to 3 seconds depending how high it was climbing during the sunrise and the sunlight began dominating… ISO settings were varying between 800 to 1600 as I was playing around. Tripod, remote shutter hand controller…
Niklas Henricson
Orion’s Nebula M42
Having a cold and a 39 degrees fever I couldn’t resist from not observing tonight. Tonight’s object was Orion’s nebula (a.k.a. M42). I had to try my new SynGuider, so things went slowly at the beginning while trying to understand the menu options and also attempting to aligning my newtonian with my Megrez 72.
The reason I was using my newtonian this time was because my FluorStar is sent for service maintainance. Unfortunately I’ve got some troubles with my crayford focuser and so I needed someone to check it out.
Regardless, both the newtonian and my Synguider did an excellent job tonight autoguiding a star and allowing me to take a shot on Orion’s nebula. I used ISO1600, experimenting with different exposures. At this particular shot it was 75 seconds.