We’ve just had a full eight days of clear skies and I finally managed to get around to testing my LX-modded SPC900. For the test I used my ST120 on the motorised EQ3-2. This is my first ever attempt at such a thing, so I wasn’t expecting stunning results and I wasn’t disappointed 🙂
First, M13. This first image is 33 exposures of 16 seconds, no darks, captured with SharpCap and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker. There’s no other processing.
And this one is the same, but 55 exposures of 10 seconds.
I can’t really decide which I prefer. The second looks perhaps a little sharper to me. I should perhaps re-stack and do some processing in photoshop, but I’ll come back to that another time.
I also tried capturing M27, the Dumbell, but whilst I ended up with stars close to being over-exposed, the nebula itself was hardly visible. An attempt on M31 similarly in failure and an image massively over-exposed in the core and no data elsewhere. I think more practice is required.