Albireo, Gamma 2 Delphinus and Gamma Andromeda
The skies certainly aren't great at the moment, what with all this humid weather and the moon still lingering into the dark hours of the night, but I decided to take the scope out in defiance of all these and do a little bit of observing.
Before the moon peeked out from behind the house I took in a final look at some of the summer targets such as the Ring (M57) before moving onto some brighter doubles (amongst them Albireo, Gamma 2 Delphinus and Gamma Andromeda) before calling in on the Andromeda Galaxy which in the diffuse moonlight was only a bright fuzzy blob. I drifted through some of the Open Clusters in Cassiopea before deciding to try some photography.
M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy
My first port of call was back at Andromeda. It was fairly easy to find in the viewfinder, but very difficult to get a focus on with the lack of contrast and no helpful stars in a close DEC range. I took a few 60s exposures just to see how it would look, not really expecting much, and having looked at them, this expectation has been met!
I then turned my attention to some wider shots using my camera piggybacked on the telescope. This one is a 120s exposure comprised of two 60s shots combined in Paint Shop Pro. It was taken with the scope centred on M31 and you can pick it out easily on the large version I ave on my computer. This one is less successful, but click it for a slightly bigger version held on Flickr.
The Moon
Finally, once the moon had risen sufficiently I took a look over that way. It was by now getting on for midnight and I only had a t-shirt on on top so you'll excuse me if I wasn't overly careful in getting a good focus. Still, I took a couple of reasonable shots, the one below covering the Plato area which shows the Vallis Alpes.
