CCD Notes First Light: Vega and environs. Epsilon Lyrae is the prominent double star in the lower left. I think stars are bloated because of the "L" channel image made through a clear filter without IR blocking. Focus may also be an issue since I did this manually and without computer assistance (except for grabbing and displaying short exposures). The 30 second white light image includes stars to about 13.7 according to Guide 8.0. Why Vega? An homage to Leslie Peltier who always inaugurated his new telescopes with a look at it. (And it was handy.) 200mm F2 Nikkor EDIF @ F2.8 SBIG ST2000XM / CFW-8a cooled to -15oC Mandel Widefield Adapter LRGB 30:30:30:30 seconds unbinned. Unguided, Losmandy G-11 mount. Acquired with CCDOps, processed with CCDops & Maxim DL 2.11 That's better: the same data reprocessed without the luminance channel; only data through IR-blocked RGB filters contribute. Messier 51 and surroundings. This is a simple sum (with alignment) of four 30-second exposures through SBIG's clear filter plus 30 seconds each through SBIG's RGB filters. I need to work some more before trying to display this as a rudimentary look-it-works color image (it does). The R-channel is substantially defocused compared to G and B with this lens -- RoboFocus is going to earn its keep behind this one. Stars to the mid-14's are visible in the orignal data. 200mm F2 Nikkor EDIF @ F2.8 SBIG ST2000XM / CFW-8a cooled to -15oC Mandel Widefield Adapter 4x30s + R30s + G30s + B30s, unbinned. Unguided, Losmandy G-11 mount. Acquired with CCDOps, processed with CCDops & Maxim DL 2.11 All these images are displayed at 50% of original file size and all are built from data taken on June 5, 2004, between twilight and moonrise. Considerable haze, some clouds blew through. My limiting visual magnitude was about 3.5 with substantial extinction away from the zenith. The first surprise of the night: how many satellites are sailing around up there -- during focus runs with the camera aimed vaguely northwest through the least cloudy portion of the deep twilight sky, I must have caught half a dozen. Substantially more cooling was avaiable, but I wanted to be sure not to run out of juice in the 40 Ah Xantrex battery which powered both the ST2000XM camera and the G11 mount (AC inverted, with a relay box for good measure). The Xantrex was still going strong at 11:15 (a little over 2 hours later) as was the self-powered notebook computer. I did just enough messing with the self-guiding mode to discover that it works just as advertised and makes sense in CCDops. A 600-second exposure of M51 was nicely guided but crippled by field rotation -- be more careful with alignment. The IR-response in this lens is deadly, so use HaRGB, or RGB combinations with this lens (or swap out the clear filter for an IR-blocked version and stop worrying about it). June 13: I have not seen a single star or starlike object since taking the first-light images over a week ago. There were twelve minutes of clear air on the morning of June 8 for the transit of Venus (here), so I can't exactly grouse about the weather. So let's look at it this way: I'm getting lots of time to set up software and to build bracketry. Adirondack Video Astronomy has an IR-blocked clear filter on the way, and it just might arrive before the weather breaks. Geez.