I don't have all the attendee info from Saturday (will leave that to Dean) but my diving/photography/astronomy buddy Roger Southwick and I showed up at Eagle Bluff well before dark to take advantage of getting setup early (unlike the last time I was there). We made quick work of our setups and waited for darkness. I believe the first person after us was Allen? I'm terrible with names but later we had Luka and then Dean, and Jerome & Jillissa showed up. I know I forgot someone but was so involved on imaging etc.
Visibility was questionable early on as clouds sneaked into the skies above us but before long we had some pretty decent viewing. I only did B&W pics for the night and was trying to learn more about locations of items in the heavens but went back to some of the more familiar items I've imaged before. I was using my new Milburn wedge and it was so smooth and stable I was able to do 30 second exposures with little to no drifting, on top of that I switched capture software. I was using the Meade Envisage and recently bought the Nebulosity. I wondered if I threw too much on my plate with all the changes but the Neb software was wonderful and it didn't have all the quirks of the Envisage. The only obvious bad pictures came from the wind or if someone was walking heavy near the scope, and of course frost.
Here are a couple pictures from that night. The first is M57 at wide aspect, I've done this in color before but just wanted to practice with everything and once I got home and processed I was able to see a very faint galaxy to the right of the nebula (won't show up on the posted pics), so that was a nice surprise. Also a zoomed in picture of M57 for detail.
Also the Bowtie nebula under some harsh conditions (frost was forming on the optics) and Cleopatra's Eye, can't wait to do that in color! Also M2 star cluster and tried to capture part of M42, by this time my telescope was all frosted up and the image came out fuzzy but I can say I seen it. M42 will be one of those images that will require hours upon hours to get all the details and because of the size several mosaic pictures.
I also tried to see some of the Horsehead nebula and after 2 minutes of exposure could faintly see some nebula detail… I do mean faintly. This one will be a few hours of imaging down the road before I take this one on.
I was nearly 4:30am that Roger mentioned the time and I thought how fast the night went, we packed up and was at my house in Rochester by 6am. It was a great night under the stars.
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