The Elephants Trunk Nebula
September 6th, 2011
A bit of sneaky in between the clouds work netted me a few hours over the weekend of reasonably clear viewing, and a good chance to test that everything was working after the trip down to France and back. As it turns out the only thing to have given up is the PC in the shed, which has had intermittent problems with video output for a while despite being tried on three separate video cards. A new motherboard may be in order there, or perhaps just an ST4 to USB converter so I can use my new laptop down there instead as it is much faster. For this weekend I dug out my old and somewhat unstable laptop as at least if has both serial and parallel ports and can talk to everything!
There is something to be said for makers of astronomy equipment taking up a method of connectivity which is actually to be found on modern computers. The inclusions of a standard ethernet port on the Vixen Sphinx is perfect. The iOptron IEQ45 mounts have USB connectivity as standard as well, so perhaps there is some movement towards this, a pity Celestron didn’t push further with the CGEM to make it stand out more from the EQ6 it is cloned from.
Anyway, hunting around for something to image I went back to my copy of The 100 Best Astrophotography Targets for inspiration and decided upon the Elephants Trunk nebula in the IC1396 region of Cepheus. I managed to grab a couple of hours on both nights, though some strong winds, annoying clouds and unwanted movement whilst imaging near the zenith caused a few lost frames.
- Canon 1000D (Modified)
- Astronomik CLS-CCD Filter
- Orion Optics 250mm f4.8 Reflector
- 29 x 5 minutes (21 x bias, dark and flat)
