April Report
A fantastic month for various reasons...
Observing
I've had some nice views of Saturn now that its out of my heavily light polluted Eastern sky. Managing to take the magnification up to 200x and 400x on occasion. Plenty of cloud bands to seen and very slim rings as expected. I had a very good observing evening mid month looking at The doube cluster, M35-M38 clusters, Iota Cancri was a nice treat. Its suddenly dawned on me that there is at least one contrasting double star in a favourable position all year round (whether it be Albireo, Mirach or Iota Cancri). The main targets of my observing this month obviously have to be galaxies. So far I have seen great views of M81 & M82. I've also seen faint hints of spiral arms on M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy at lower magnifications. Best of all for me was a view of all three Leo triplet galaxies.
New Imaging Setup (Guiding!)
Well, I've finally given in to the temptation and "come over to the dark side" as some call it lol. I've added an extra dovetail bar and guide rings to my main telescope rings. It holds a 70mm refractor on top as an additional guide scope during imaging. Put simply it means I can take much much longer exposure lengths without trailing star problems. The end result is more detail in my deep sky images so look out for a year of improvements hopefully!
This months imaging
-Saturn
-M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy My first go at this wonderful spiral galaxy (first image with the new guiding setup)
-M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy A much improved go at this famous face on spiral (again with new guiding setup)
