Holiday blogging

It's been a while since I've put finger to keyboard, but the last week of June is busy in the 'ol education biz and I was away visiting my mom till yesterday. Once I get caught up on the news I'll return to the regularly scheduled political ranting that is normally in this space. Till then I'll show some pics. Specifically, I bought a new telescope and while visiting my mom, managed to get a couple of shots. First light was of M13 and the next shot was M51. So here's the "first light" photograph of M13. The tracking on both was a little off as I didn't do much for polar alignment other than just sighting up the polar axis of the telescope. This is a prime focus photo taken with a Nikon D50 set to emulate 1600 ASA film. The exposure time was 62 seconds.



The second target was M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. This particular image was with the same setup as the M13 shot only 167 seconds long.



Finally a shot of Jupiter, this one was about an eighth of a second.



Here's a shot of the setup that I used. The 'scope is a Skywatcher 127mm (5 inch) Maksutov mounted on a German equatorial mount. A pretty good deal for under a grand Canadian.