The Ring Nebula and a Point & Shoot

After weeks of lousy weather ending with the grand finale of Gustav, I finally got some afocal imaging with my new reflector. This 10” Newtonian F/4.7 is a true power house and the mount I’ve attached it to is solid as a rock. This afocal image consist 10x15 sec. subs unguided using our point & shoot camera and a steady pix mount. Stacking the 10 subs in Registax4 I used PSE 2.0 for final processing. This scope and mount will definitely keep my busy for years to come, especially once I begin upgrading my imaging equipment to match its true performance…

Waxing Gibbous 84% 10.97 days old

Taken July 13th. This is one afocal shot through a 40mm EP.

Waxing Gibbous 99.6% 14.30 days

Both images were captured Tuesday night with less than desirable conditions. Seeing was 2/5 at best, with high clouds thickening, but after 5 weeks of clouds and rain... I was just happy to get the equipment out of the garage! The first pic is one afocal shot through a 32mm ep and the second consist of 7800 sub web cam frames stacked to generate the 7 sections I targeted for stitching of the final mosaic image. Copernicus and the Kepler crater rays are easy to spot along with Aristarchus above and left. Click the images to see full size!