80°F

11:00pm-12:45am

-First Light (again)!! What I mean by that is, it’s my first light with my Meade DSI Pro II. And I have to say again, it was definitely a (relative) success! Everything worked exactly how it should, and I came home with a cool picture. The weather was PERFECT, although the visibility could’ve been better. I’m extremely happy with the final picture I got even though I know it can be WAY better. I’ve found out that astro-photography is MUCH more of an art-form than it is a science… and there’s a LOT of science involved!

So, after I got everything up and running, I slew the scope over to M104… why? Well, I was going to go after something simple like Saturn or maybe just a double star, but I decided on M104 because 1) it’s in the southern sky for me (which is the darkest) and 2) because I figured if I could get a decent picture out of a deep sky object my first night out, I would be really proud of myself, which I did! Like I said, I know I can do WAY better, but considering I’ve NEVER taken a REAL astro- photograph in my life, I’ve never used the software, never used the camera, don’t know how to use Photoshop or how to do any post-production on the images, haven’t done a real good polar alignment, and am still getting a handle on just the basics… I feel I made a huge step in my new hobby…

Also, the picture is a composite of only 15, 30 second images (5x30sec Red, 5x30sec Blue, 5x30sec Green) unguided, and could’ve been stacked better. Much more to learn! Can’t wait to get to a dark sky and start taking some more images!!