Tag Archives: Messier

Start M1 with Luminance

Last night was not only clear, it was excellent.  Clear, moderate seeing, no moon, and temperature only about -3°C.  It’s late enough in the year now that the Orion area is now above my high horizon.  With the AT8 scope presently mounted, I started on M1.  Mount was performing very well – tracking very well on its own, and autoguiding to around 1 arcsecond (which is less than seeing jitter, and so just a guess).

Here is the start of M1, the Crab Nebula.  This is 2 hours of luminance as 24 5-minute subframes.  It’s going to be clouds for many days now, so I’ll add colour later if and when the sky permits.