Southern hemisphere at last!

I've been away in Brazil this last week (I get to travel with work), we're doing some work with a shipyard south of Sao Paulo, at about -23.8 deg and 48deg W. This is the first time i've been in the southern hemisphere.

And yes...you guessed it - it was mostly cloudy at night (the astronomer's curse strikes again). I did get to see Sirius directly overhead on Thursday night, but no southern Milky Way or Magellanic clouds.

:o(

Chris

Avian Starseeker first light.

Really, this session started out as no more than a quick test of the telescope with the camera.

It wasn't a particularly good night (6th March) so i was just hoping to see what I was going to need in the way of extension tubes to get a good focus with the camera. I put in the 75mm extension tube and pointed the scope to a brightish star (Betelgeuse), and used Maxim to take focus frames while I found the focus.

As it happened that didn't take as long as I was expecting so I decided to have a go at something not too tricky as it was a mediochre night.

So I slewed over to M35 and took 5 off 30 second exposures in each filter followed by 10 flat frames in each filter.

When processed I got this....

...which isn't bad at all, so all in all a successful night and a reasonable first light image.

:o)

Chris

It arrived

The Avian Starseeker arrived today after a failed attempt yesterday.

Need to try it out on some good skies, but it feels like it will be a good investment.

:)