It was a cold night – but clear and well worth going out for some observing. I don’t think I could have asked for a better weekend to have taken off to my Dad’s in Tobermory. For those that don’t know where that is – it ‘s on the tip of the Bruce Pennisula – surrounded on 3 sides by Great Lakes and only a narrow path of light polluted civilization leading to it.

I took the opportunity to try a few new items – my new guide scope and illuminated guiding eyepiece (purchased from Mike), and my new dew shield (no dew or frost problems with the main scope last night). I concentrated on Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy – and took 5 minute manually guided images (this was my first attempt at guided images). I have stacked and processed the Bode’s Galaxy (M81) sequence and will have others later. The weather is calling for similar conditions all weekend, so I will try different objects over the next few days.

A note on viewing ANY astrophoto’s on an LCD monitor – make sure your viewing angle is at least straight on or above or nebulosity will be drastically diminished (or possibly not visible at all). I actually had one person swear I sent them the wrong photo as they couldn’t see the object I was describing anywhere on the image – they were correct – their monitor was tilted on an angle that caused poor visibility – when viewed from an angle below the LCD monitor’s mid-point an entire galaxy had disappeared! (so fix the angle on your LCD monitors – you don’t want to be responsible for wiping out an entire galaxy!)

These are reduced images – I will post the full images to my gallery on Sunday.