28.3.12

More minors

When a night arrived with noticeably better transparency I looked forward to the next session. I was once more in "beat the moon" mode as it gets higher in the sky. However, after having enjoyed a good run of reliability with my equipment I was dismayed to find the declination drive had ceased to function. It was obviously slipping on the drive shaft but curing the problem in the dark proved frustratingly elusive. I was forced to abandon for the night and wait for some daylight when I could see better what had gone wrong. A disassemble and screw replacement put things right so I was ready for the following evening when the good transparency had held though the moon was an increasing problem. I found this pair of NGCs in Leo Minor but had to wait for the moon to get lower before getting some useable subs. Fortunately the declination drive was back to normal. Upper left is NGC 3304 and lower right is the somewhat more interesting NGC 3294. Details: 10" f4.3 Newt. 12 x 8 minute exposures @ iso1600 with CLS in DSS, FIV, CS2 & XAT.

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