2nd August

Pluto

I have never seen Pluto before, or taken an image.
It is very low in the sky, and getting lower each year, so I decided to try for it before it becomes impossible.
The DDM60 mount did its job well and pointed almost exactly on target.




3rd August
I wondered how fast Pluto's position in the sky would change.
Consulting Stellarium, it would appear that Pluto will move 74.6 arc seconds in 24 hours.
With this in mind I took another image. This animation clearly shows the movement:



For two measured images the coordinates were:
2nd August RA 18 48 33.24 DEC -20 24 58.5 Time 23:29:51
3rd August RA 18 48 28.35 DEC -20 25 11.7 Time 21:47:07

This gives a shift of 70.00 arc seconds in 22.28778 hours, which equates to 75.4 arcseconds in 24 hours


3rd August

M16 Eagle nebula

More OIII data captured.
The total is now 9x10 minutes Ha, 12X10 minutes SII and 15x10 minutes OIII




August19th

Good clear sky tonight, almost on the 20 SQM meter.
I got 11x10 minutes each in SII and OIII for the Cocoon nebula.
There was almost no OIII at all in the image so the Hubble palette did not look good..
I mapped Ha to Red, SII to Green and OIII to Blue and used this to add colour to the luminance image from July 23rd.




Slightly desaturated



22nd August

I had a look at comet C/2014 E2 Jacques.
It was small and faint and moving fast.
Equipment, cloud and software problems meant that only eight 60 second frames were captured.



Negative image, stacked on the comet.
Slight hint of a tail to the lower right.
(Median stack to decrease stars)


28th August

First look at SH2-155 otherwise known as the Cave Nebula
18 x 10 minutes in Ha