M45, the Pleaides
by Vern on Dec.09, 2006, under Astronomy, Deep sky, Open Cluster
An image of the open cluster M45 in the constellation Taurus from last evening after moonrise.
Images taken from light polluted Louisville, CO with Stellarvue A1010 80mm refractor telescope and Canon Xti camera at direct focus. Nine 4 minute exposures were dark subtracted and flat field corrected, stacked, aligned and enhanced with ImagePlus.
This was a guiding experiment using “PhdGuiding” software available from Stark Labs. Overall, the software did a good job of guiding. I have the Stellarvue mounted on a Losmandy rail on the Nexstar11. A Stellacam II was used as a guide camera and the Nexstar11 as a guide scope. The Stellacam II is excellent as a guide cam due to its low light sensitivity. No problem finding guide stars with the Stellacam! The “Phd Guiding” user interface is quite good, far better than most packages. Setup up is simple and the price is right (free). Only problem I had was the serial interface used to connect to the Celestron locked up after I exited the “Phd Guiding” program. A logout corrected the problem. It only happened once fortunately. Automated guiding is certainly more fun than tweaking buttons.
