Messier Goodness

After a week of cloudy, crappy weather, last night was finally clear. So I zipped on down to the RASC Calgary Centre's Wilson Coulee Observatory and took some pictures before the clouds started rolling in. I managed to catch M1, M42, M44 and M65 (pics below the cut). I've also uploaded full size pictures to the download section of this blog under astro-photos along with my other Messier astrophotos. Eleven down, 99 to go. Enjoy!

I was amazed that this shot of M1 actually worked, sort of. I couldn't see a thing in the viewfinder to focus so it was a bit of a guess. Add to the fact that I even found M1 it made a good night as I've been trying to find M1 for about 20 years now.

M1 - The Crab Nebula

M42 was the next target. This was easy to find, it being so large, but because of the season and the time of day, Orion was beginning to set, so M42 was very low on the horizon. This put it in the muck and the seeing was awful, as the picture shows.

M42 - The Great Nebula in Orion

The Beehive cluster, M44, was next. This is also an easy target as it is a naked eye object. It's also huge. Through the C-14 you can only see a few stars of the cluster at a time and even with the 500mm mirror lens the cluster is frame filling. This was a piggy-back shot with the camera mounted coaxially with the telescope. This allows the telescope's drive to track the camera.

M44 - The Beehive Cluster

The final target for the night was M65. Final in that the clouds started rolling in while working on this one so all I have is a couple of piggy-back shots through the 500mm mirror lens. It clouded up before I could get a prime focus shot through the C-14.

M65 - Open Cluster in Leo