Kerry?s recent blog about the Astro-dollies reminded me that I hadn?t posted about my first digital imaging session earlier this month. I?ve managed to retrieve my pictures from the depths of our computer?s reluctant hard drive and the better ones (Ha. Ha. Ha.) are posted with this report.
During the night that followed our perfect HAA Binbrook picnic (thanks again to Glenn & Gail for organizing it and delivering perfect weather!!), I had an absolute blast learning to image with my new Rebel Xti and Celestron GOTO mount. Both Jackie and Kerry were ?instrumental? (sorry ? bad pun) in showing me the ropes and making my first attempt mostly successful. Jackie acted as my imaging guru and Kerry patiently lent her eyes to the task of composing and/or confirming focus for us when we were having trouble. Thank you, both!!! Having such a high level of expertise so close at hand made the whole learning process great fun and very effective.
I can?t recall a time when I laughed so hard during an observing session. (Lesson #1: don?t laugh while you?re holding the camera?s cable release. You?ll end up with an image that looks like a flock of seagulls flying in the shape of the Andromeda galaxy.)
As I mentioned earlier, here are a few trophies from my first imaging session. The images are unprocessed (I haven?t got a clue how to process them!!!) and compressed to fit this page. (That?s astro-code for: they look a lot better in person or they will (I hope!) after they?ve been processed.)
Astro-dollies rule!!
Ann T.
