Report: The hunt for Messier Objects

I went to the pub with a few friends from the local photographic society, and eventually got home about 23:30. I looked up, as I always do, and saw it was a good clear night (you know - when you just seem to see more stars than usual). So decided to quickly cart my gear into the garden and set up. 

Galaxies M81 and M82
Click for annotated version

By around midnight I was set up and aligned - I'm starting to love the routine of setting up now - tripod facing N? check, tripod level? check, Polaris aligned? check, north star focused at 10x zoom with DSLR? check. Once I was star aligned I popped back into the house to look at my report of what there is to see that night, wrote down in my notebook M39 - an open cluster in Cygnus. Having looked at a few images of it, I saw it wasn't your usual cluster (no cloudy blob of stars) so I noted down a rough sketch of what I should be looking for.


So I head downstairs and outside, and punch in M39 on the keypad and watch it slew to the right position. I look up to see... cloud. Bright lit-up-by-the-goddamn-moon type of cloud, moving in. I quickly fired the shutter for 30s to see if I could at least catch something before the cloud came in, but looking at the image after - a hazy blank image with the most prominent stars just shining through.

So I headed in and shouted at my girlfriend about how annoying it all was and she said to just wait a bit, it may pass. But of course, I'm sure you all know, there's never an opening in the cloud! I then noticed there was a clear area of sky lower down toward the horizon, so quickly found some more targets to try out. Armed with my list - M51, M52, M81, M101, I had another go.

M52 - Open Cluster in Cassiopeia
Click for annotated version

First, the pinwheel and whirlpool galaxies - I managed to capture them, but laughed at how feint they were and decided to leave them for another night. Then I moved onto M81 & M82 and got a surprise, they were surprisingly clear - however, due to the theme of the night, it wasnt perfect. The neighbours tree decided to stick a branch right through my field of view. A few more swear words and I then slewed over to M52 - Open cluster in Cassiopia - it was there my luck changed. It looked stunning, a clear hazy cloud of stars on a black background was what met me on my camera screen. I spent about 10 minutes then capturing exposures to stack. I then moved back to M81 & M82, to see if they'd moved clear of the branch - to which they had :-) Good times! - another 10 or so minutes worth of exposures on these and I then realised the clouds had passed, revealing M39 - my original target. A quick final slew and there it was, clear as anything. I took a few shots, then compared the formation of the stars to my sketch - even showed my girlfriend who was very impressed how I found such a formation in the sky that was exactly the same to what I had planned/drawn out. Another 10 minutes or so of exposures and I decided to call it a night.

M39 - Open cluster in Cygnus
Click for annotated version

The only thing I am a little disappointed with, is I completely forgot to get some dark frames. Though my last few sessions have mainly used the same camera settings so could possibly use some of those.

I finished viewing at around 01:00. Came inside, then wrote down the file numbers of each object from - to, as I find this is much easier when I come to stacking as I know which RAW files to stack - considering I can't preview the image quickly.

The following day I processed the images using Deepskystacker 3.3.3 (beta version) and then touched up the images in Photoshop CS5. I'm really happy with how they came out, especially the two galaxies.