M27 The Dumbell Nebula

Stayed up late to see the interesting side of the sky again.
M27 The Dumbell Nebula in Vulpecula et Anser (The Fox and the Goose)
A little trailing (!) again but it's nice to have colour in the images again.
4X5min

Arcturus

A picture of a bright star in it's field can look good- specially when there's a little colour.
In fact this pic is the result of some autoguider tweaking.
Unlike Pete R I haven't been changing the PHD settings, (yet) just tightening any mechanical flexure I can think of.
1 10 minute frame @ 800iso

Dust Bunnies Galore

This is a lesson stating that you shouldn't get your dslr sensor in as bad a state as this one.
I know it's a picture of the daytime sky at f22 but those shadows still show through the scope or fast lens. I did get it commercially cleaned, and will probably do it myself next time.
The trick is not to leave the camera sans lens for too long, and when it is - point in down so the dust doesn't fall onto it.

Thinking aloud

For some of my deep sky shots I have been taking dark frames (should be for them all) and although I have just had my sensor cleaned, I really should do flat frames as well. There are various designs for these on the web from bulky boxes to laptop screens.
My thought is to get a (cheap) digital photo frame and load it with a "white" photo. should work - shouldn't it? Anyway I think that's the plan.

Lunar badlands

This shows the Hippalus Rilles concentric with wrinkle ridges on Mare Humorum.

Also seen are Hesiodus and Ramsden rilles. See Rukl 52/53.
This was mostly shot through thin cloud so I'm pretty happy with it.
120ED refractor + meade 2.8x barlow f21
mosaic of 5x60 second avi captures
click on image for larger view

Closer to home

With a bright moon in the sky I turned my attention to our neighbours.

I'm fairly pleased with this effort from a 60sec avi sequence.120mm aperture @ f15 (using 2x barlow) Registax 5

Lost in the realm of galaxies

Here's M100 in Virgo. Lovely face-on spiral.

I'm off to search for something bigger and with a bit more colour (may have to turn the dome north!)