Ptolemy’s Cluster

I haven’t done a lot of astro-photography lately for several reasons. One of them being my attempts to convert the LX-90 from alt-az to equatorial mount. It’s causing a few headaches, as I described on my text-blog “Above Us Only Sky“.

In the meantime, I took the following images on a recent field trip with the camera piggy backed on the inaccurately aligned LX-90. The tracking was not too bad for short exposures – I wish  I had taken a few more images to stack.

2014-10-28 Scorpius: The Fish Hook & Ptolemy’s Cluster:  70mm 5x60sec f2.8 ISO 1600

2014-10-28 Scorpius: The Fish Hook & Ptolemy’s Cluster: 118mm 9x30sec f2.8 ISO 800

2014-10-28 Scorpius: The Fish Hook & Ptolemy’s Cluster: 70mm 2x30sec f2.8 ISO 2000

On this particular night there was a lot of interest in Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) as it was one day short of its encounter with Mars. However the comet did not reach predicted magnitudes and probably peaked  between mag 10 and 11. It doesn’t even show in the image below.

Mars is the bright object lower centre, with the Lagon Nebula almost directly above it (centre, near Milky Way). The position of C/2013 A1 was a short distance to the upper left of Mars. There is a triangle of 8th magnitude stars just above Mars and the comet wasnot visible, just to their left. Disappointing:

2014-10-18 Ophiucus Sagittarius: Milky Way, Mars, Lagoon Nebula & Ptolemy’s Cluster: 35mm 4x30sec f1.8 ISO 4000

 

All images © R.Powell