M45 Pleiades 7 Sisters open cluster

M45 The Pleiades, 7 Sisters, open star cluster in Taurus

Date: 11/5/2010

Location: Tierra Del Sol, California

Conditions: 0% moon, seeing 8/10, transparency 2/10, temperature 55 F, wind 5 - 10 mph.

Telescope: Canon 100-400mm L series lens, 250 mm @ f4, mounted on Kirk ball head

Mount: AstroTract, provided polar scope used to polar align.

Camera: Canon EOS 7D

Focusing: Manual on Jupiter. LIVE FOCUS with 10x magnification used on camera viewer.

Exposures: (6) 2 min raw 1600 ISO, (0) darks, (0) bias, (0) flats

Processing: Images Plus 3.82 - Used automatic image set processing to convert raw to a fits file, normalized,graded, aligned, and combined using min-max, performed digital development, color saturation & brightness, gradient removal, smoothing, cropping, converted to JPEG. Use Photoshop CS5 for final levels, sharping, and optimizing for web.

Comments: The weather was very moist with marine layer and clouds. Jupiter seeing was excellent, as I have never seen it better.

M45 The Pleiades, 7 Sisters, open star cluster in Taurus

Date: 11/4/2010

Location: Tierra Del Sol, California

Conditions: 0% moon, seeing 4/10, transparency 4/10, temperature 58 F, wind 8 - 15 mph..

Telescope: Canon 24-105mm L series lens, 105mm @ f4, mounted on Kirk ball head

Mount: AstroTract, provided polar scope used to polar align.

Camera: Canon EOS 7D

Focusing: Manual on Jupiter. LIVE FOCUS with 10x magnification used on camera viewer.

Exposures: (4) 4 min raw 1600 ISO, (0) darks, (0) bias, (0) flats

Processing: Images Plus 3.82 - Used automatic image set processing to convert raw to a fits file, normalized,graded, aligned, and combined using min-max, performed digital development, color saturation & brightness, gradient removal, smoothing, cropping, converted to JPEG. Use Photoshop CS5 for final sharping and optimizing for web.

Comments: This was the first night I used my AstroTract mount. I am quite happy with the tracking and my polar alignment was not bad. This is going to be a great small pick up and go mount for imaging wide field and some deep sky objects with my Canon 7d and the associated lens I have with it. Finding deep sky objects in the view finder however is very challenging.

Date:10/21/2006

Location: Vallecito County Park, California

Conditions: 0% moon, seeing 7/10, transparency 8/10, temperature 75-55 F, very dry night.

Telescope: Televue 85mm refractor, 600mm focal length, F7, prime focus, no diagonal.

Mount: Losmandy G11, Gemini goto, polar scope used to align, rough drift alignment

Camera: Canon Rebel 300d

Focusing: Manual on star using right angle Canon 2.5 magnifying view finder.

Exposures: (4) 2 min raw 800 ISO, (4) 4 min raw, 800 ISO

Processing: IP 2.75 - converted raw to FITS, dark frame calibrated, graded, align-rotate, combine median average,. digital development, convert to 16 bit TIFF, PS CS , levels, color saturation, cropped for web, sharpen edges, unsharp mask, converted to JPEG, Neat image smoothing.

Comments: This was not bad for my first try.