The LX200 and the Moon

After I took a couple of pictures of Albireo with the LX200 I decided to try take a picture of our closest celestrial body, the moon.  It was big, it was bright, and it seemed like an easy target.

As it turns out, taking a picture of the moon is easy.  Taking a good picture isn't (for a total novitiate).  My first few images weren't entirely awful, but they sure weren't great either.

LX200, DSLR and the moon.

Acquiring the moon, framing it and setting the timer on the camera wasn't a problem.  Focusing was the trick.  This was the best I could do on my first run.

The LX200 and MallinCam Experiment - M32

M32 - a dwarf elliptical galaxy in the Andromeda constellation. It's a sister galaxy to the more famous Andromeda Galaxy, M31, which is what I actually thought I was capturing with the MallinCam.

It was difficult processing this video as there aren't many good reference images out there for what this galaxy supposedly looks like. Some images show the nucleus being huge, while others show it being small. While I was able to achieve both renditions during processing, I arbitrarily opted for the smaller nucleus.

Messier 32 (NGC 221) - Le Gentil

Either way, I think it looks like a blurry globular cluster.

This shot was taken with a focal reducer on the back of an LX200-ACF.  Next time I'll take off the f/3.3 reducer to get a more magnified view. I attempted to do that after I took this recording, but the clouds beat me.

LX200, DSLR and Albireo

After my experiments with the LX200 and MallinCam, I decided that I had to break out something that could capture color.  My DSLR.  Problem is, long exposures on the LX200 with its alt-az fork mount, would (relatively) quickly result in stair trailing when capturing the faint fuzzies.

So, the answer was to go for the real bright objects, stars.  Short exposure and I still get some color!

Albireo - double star

As it turns out, the brighter yellow star in this pair is itself part of another binary system!