Mike's Astro Photos

M42 Orion's Nebula (Guided)

It took me about 2 months after getting my guide scope and STV auto-guider before I actually figured out how to use it. The first few times I tried it, it wouldn’t work. I thought the cable was bad and got a new one, still no luck. Thanks to the guys on the SBIG mailing list I was able to figure it out. With the STV at least you can’t auto-guide unless you are equatorial aligned. For me, this meant I had to get an equatorial wedge and polar align my scope before trying to auto-guide. I bought a wedge from a local astronomer and the picture below is the result of my first polar aligned, wedge mounted auto guided shot of M42. Its 2 2 minute exposures stacked using photoshop (so total of 4 minute exposure). There are still things that I’m not doing right. I’m not perfectly polar aligned for starters, also my focus is off a bit. There are also some errors in the image which I think are the result of a dirty lense. But all these things aside, I was super physch’d when I took this picture. I had been trying to get my STV working for months to no avail. Once I was wedge mounted and polar aligned the thing worked like a charm.