The LX200 and MallinCam Experiment - M3

My first foray into astrophotography began with a Meade LX200-ACF with a MallinCam Jr.  The LX200 is great catadioptric telescope that sits on a rock solid alt-az mount.  My alma mater made this equipment available for use to help promote astronomy at the school and in the community.

The MallinCam is a very sensitive CCD video camera that features frame integration, allowing a live view of deep space objects (within reach of this telescope) on an external display.  This is a terrific way to show groups of people what the telescope is looking at without having to form a queue at the eye piece.

This particular MallinCam is the entry-level version.  The frame integration is insufficient for capturing color so everything comes through as grayscale.  My very first photograph was of M3 the huge globular cluster in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici.

It was terrible:

Messier 3 (NGC 5272) - Globular Cluster

I took 2.5 minutes of footage and processed it using Registax.  This was an experience in and of itself.  The end result was a low resolution, coma-stricken, posterized shot of M3.

What an awful picture... but what a headrush to have captured something 199 quadrillion miles from earth!