Railfan_Bill Loc: "Lost Wages", Nevada

HAve you ever reached a point when you just want to put all your equipment up onto Ebay and go back to sewing? I was almost to this point last night. Very frustrating, too. I leveled and PA my mount. I set up my IPolar and found the NCP. So far, so good. Well, this is where the bovine excrement strikes the air handler! I tried the two star alignment and wound up about 5° off bubble. I could not get it to play fair. So I went back to completely restart my PA with the three position setting. After the movements, my cross is now in the center of the screen and I was able to find my two star alignment and Jupiter. Well, with this new-found ability, it is off to my selected target: the Bubble Nebula. It came in perfectly and, as a bonus, I was also able to image the Salt and Pepper Star Cluster. I am really pleased with the results. Just look->

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stepping beyond Loc: usa eastcoast

Railfan , that's a pretty nice Bubble nebula and what equipment were you using?

Railfan_Bill Loc: "Lost Wages", Nevada

I am using a CEM40 mount by Ioptron, an 8 inch RC reflector telescope and a ZWO 071 APS-C color camera. I took the bubble nebula using the mount without any guiding. I took 20 exposures for 300 seconds each. I used the ASI Studio for data gathering. I stacked the twenty imaged with Deep Sky Stacker and post-processed them in Gimp. The Salt and Pepper star cluster was done the same way except only 14 images at 180 seconds. I was running out of time and freezing my you know what off. They say that Las Vegas is in the desert, but few know that it gets very cold out there especially at the higher altitudes. In the Mojave Preserve, I observed temps down to 17° F at night. RFB

stepping beyond Loc: usa eastcoast

That's freezing bum off cold , it maybe dark as all get out . Most all mounts get sluggish unless you replace the thick grease with white lithium grease it'll not freeze or thicken up . keep it yup Rail_fan Bill

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

17° in November? We might have a cold winter. Excellent Bubble by the way.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Both are very nice images.

DickC Loc: NE Washington state

Those are great shots, thanks for sharing!!