by Paul LeFevre
Saturday night at Henry Coe was the first time this year it's really felt like Spring.
Sunshine in abundance during the day, the Giants game (preseason) on the radio for the drive down...God, I'm glad winter's over!
I arrived at Coe early, to find the parking lot full of non-astronomers (how dare they!). My intention was to set up and take some solar pics, but clouds to the east made me give up any thoughts of photographing old Sol. I did set up with the solar filter, and shared some sunspot views with passing hikers and bikers, which was fun. Finally some other astro folk trickled in, and things started to get serious. The clouds were a worry for most of the early evening, but things cleared up nicely as the night wore on, and despite some wet atmosphere it turned out to be a pretty good night.
I've taken on the masochistic task of learning astrophotography over the past few months with my new-in-January 8" Meade SCT on a GEM mount and homemade tripod. Taking film astrophotos is both incredibly easy and dauntingly difficult...there is so much to learn! I've been trying to take it one step at a time, learning techniques and mastering the equipment, and it's been somewhat hard to be patient as I've burned through film and spent long hours outside without much to show for it yet. Saturday night, however, some of that background work finally paid off. I nailed my polar alignment, was able to center and use guide stars for my autoguider, the mount was well-adjusted and balanced, and things were tracking wonderfully...time to take some pictures.
I spent most of the night acquiring targets and starting exposures, only to have them ruined by a passing car or by someone leaving the lot early without announcing they were going. Sigh. This is why astrophotographers like spots far away from others, I'm learning. Still, out of 12 shots I took -- with exposure times ranging from 10 minutes to 1 hour -- I had three turn out OK, and one more shot that absolutely stunned me. After having one 30-minute shot of M51 ruined by car lights, I decided to try it one more time...the autoguider happily tracked for 40 minutes with very few guiding corrections, no cars left the lot, and despite the soft seeing the shot turned out better than I ever thought it would...you can see the results at http://www.slip.net/~lefevre/M51_3_25.jpg This is the best photo I have ever taken, and I finally feel like I'm on my way in astrophotography! (For the technically minded, this is a 40-minute exposure on Kodak PJ800 film, Meade 8" 203SC SCT with off-axis guider and guided by a Meade 201XT autoguider, scanned from a print and processed with Adobe Photoshop) It took a lot of work to get this first good shot, but if anybody tells you that you can't do decent astrophotos on a $900 SCT -- tell them you know somebody who can prove otherwise! :)
I have some other shots that are probably worth putting up (M104, M45, NGC2024) that I'll get around to processing later...I'd like to scan the negatives on all of these rather than the prints.
What a great night. I finally got some photos I can be proud of, there was great company, and it didn't rain :) Since taking photos involved setting up the shot and then walking away as the autoguider did its thing, I got a good chance to wander around and chat with the crowd. Phil Chambers' NexStar was VERY fun to play with; I shared great views of the success of Jamie's galaxy hunts (and got introduced to his cool new/used AstroVan); I got to look through Stacy's large Orion achromat (very sharp!); and got to discuss...um...the architectural design of the commode with Mimi Wagner after she nailed her 110th Messier (congrats, Mimi!).
I was planning on just bringing my 12.5" dob to the MMM next week -- now that things are working, I think I'll bring the SCT as well, and let it autoguide some more shots while I hunt down Messiers. What a blast! ;-)
