Great end to 2013

Leading up to Christmas 2013, Cheryl hinted and hinted at the idea of getting me a watch. I've been without a watch for a while, and she's even asked if I wanted to go in shops looking for one. I even asked her if her present to me was something I'd not had for a while and she laughed. Come Christmas morning, she gives me a small wrapped gift. I tear back the paper and it's a tin, the kind of tin a watch would come in.

I read the top of the tin lid to see it's a QHY5L-ii guide camera / CCD camera. Chuffed to pieces would be an understatement of how happy I was. I jokingly put this on my Christmas list as it's a fair piece of money, so couldn't believe she'd actually bought it.

Jump to a few days later, I've sussed out the way it fixes to my finderscope and installed the required software on my laptop. Part of me was hoping for plenty of clouds as it's always a little daunting getting a new piece of equipment in the hobby of astrophotoraphy - nothing is ever simple or straightforward.

Surprisingly, after maybe an hour of playing around and clicking different buttons, I managed to get the guide camera fixed on a star (for those of you that don't know, a guide camera "watches" a selected star and tells the mount to follow it exactly, you could say the guide cam acts as an eye for the mount).

My first image captured using the guidecam was the Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33). This shot below was a total of 29 minutes exposure, with each image at an exposure of 160 seconds. Before the guidecam I was unable to image longer than 70 - 80 seconds without the stars trailing off. Safe to say this camera is doing its job!

Which brings me on to my final image of 2013...

The Horsehead nebula has always been my favourite nebula in the night sky - having never seen it, I've always awed over images online and in books. The mysterious dark cloud in front of the nebula, forming the shape of a horses head looking away from you into the dark distance of the universe.

New Years eve 2013 I headed out with all my equipment and set up, with only one target in mind. Cheryl was busy inside baking cookies, neither of us really caring much for the hyped up day of the week.

After almost two hours inside, I came in with the captured images and spent around an hour editing the curves and levels of the final stacked result. This image is around 20 minutes of exposure (I had a few problems along the way which caused a few shots to fail sadly) and is most likely my favorite shot so far. I can't wait to get out and try again when the weather clears.