M-31

M-31 The Great Nebula in Andromeda

75mm f/3 copy lens
piggybacked on an LX-200
92 x 180 seconds

This was the first successful long exposure with a web-cam, as far as I know. December 16, 1999. I built an equatorial wedge out of scrap 1 x 12 pine in the morning, and shot this in the evening. It was published in the January 2001 issue of the Brittish magazine, Astronomy Now, in an article written by Dr. S. J. Wainwright of QCUIAG fame. I shot this while the OEM software for my QC grayscale camera was on the blink. This prompted me to write a couple of programs which have been in fairly wide use since then. See the Quickcam Software page for details.

M-31 The Great Nebula in Andromeda

10" LX-200 @ f/3.3

A feeble attempt at WCMY. This image was shot at 2x bin in an effort to reduce the exposure time. I hadn't gotten the knack of aligning yet, since I had only had the scope in continuous operation for about 2 years.