A bright moon at the observatory limited deep sky observing so we shot some more footage of Uranus, this time with the recently refurbished 20″ reflector. As this telescope is f/5 a x2 barlow produced a slightly larger image for the same f/10 as the Celestron.
As promised, and in no particular order, here are the remaining pictures from my rent-a-scope trial:
Small Magellanic Cloud (NGC 2030) |
NGC 1365 |
Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) |
After 2 clear weekends in a row, the British weather has returned to form and it’s overcast and raining again.
While I was perusing some adverts for telescopes (£££), Ann reminded me that there are telescopes available for rent on the Internet. Some rifling through old magazines followed and soon threw up the site; http://www.global-rent-a-scope.com (GRAS) run by Arnie Rosner. Some very expensive telescopes are sited under dark clear skies in Southern Australia and New Mexico and you can control them remotely from the comfort of your own home. What’s more, they even offer a free trial.
Here’s the first result, NGC 1566 in the constellation Dorado (click on the image for a full size version):
The free trial telescope is an impressive setup with an SBIG ST-2000XMC single shot colour camera on a Takahashi Sky 90 refractor and this is a 10 minute exposure. The resultant image is then automatically processed and emailed to you. The website even shows you a list of what’s in the sky at the time and all you have to do is decide what you want to photograph.
I’ll post the remaining trial images later.
