March 28, 2020
Astrophotography has taken another notch up for me. I bought an autoguider.
Now I can use it to control the mount so I no longer get poor tracking, which
at the focal length I'm using now, is common. I have been throwing out 50-60%
of my one minute subs when using the C8. Last night I set up the autoguider and I
only rejected 2 out of the 80 images I took of M96. They were 90
seconds each. I am impressed! It works with a very sensitive small camera on a
80mm guide scope that feeds data to the mount to make corrections.
M96, taken with the new autoguider setup. I took
80 images, 90 seconds each, and only had to reject two.
M3, another giant star cluster. It appears smaller than
M13, but contains around 500,000 stars.