M82 - The Cigar Galaxy
This night was the first night I did a serious drift alignment, following the procedures recommended on the cloudynights forum. The result was great, tracking worked flawlessly and I was able to take this almost 20 minutes long shot. Doing drift alignment was not as tricky as I thought it would be, the only thing that made me want to quit was the temperature. But as it is said... "there are no cold temperatures, only bad clothing"! The sky was pretty washed out thanks to the moon, but even so I'm very proud of this picture. At the beginning I had trouble with the colors (could only get a black and white picture), but with some help from cloudy nights forum I was able to get the colors out as well. Thank you all on cloudynights, you are the best!
Date: 2006-11-01 / 00:36:21 UTC
Location: Linköping, Sweden
Temperature: -5 °C
Telescope: Meade N6-AT (6" Newtonian)
Camera: Meade DSI-C
Mount: Meade LXD-75
Exposure time: 73 X 15 sec
Processing: Stretched & sharpened