Well I'm still waiting for a run of clear skies, preferably without the near full moon in the way. The only two nights that were favorable a week or so ago I was sick, or had other plans.
On the night of February 11th - 12th I did manage to get the scope setup and start my imaging run for the second of three awards on Astronomy Forums for imaging the Messier objects. There are 110 of them total (109 by some counts since one may be a duplicate - M101, a spiral galaxy may have been misidentified as another object M102). The idea behind the awards is to recognize astro imagers success in the field by photographing the whole set of Messier objects. You get an award for the first 40, then one for the next 40, and finally one for the complete set. Of course the first 40 is fairly easy as we usually go for the 'low hanging fruit'. I completed my first 40 last year.
So it was off to image M95 and M96. M95 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo, the lion. M96 is a nearby galaxy almost in the same field of view of my camera. I set up the scope to automate the imaging of both galaxies during the night while I, of course, slept, since the next day was a work day. I had planned to take 30 subs of each object, each one an exposure of 3min.
When I checked the image capture on the morning of the 12th I discovered that I actually got 60 subs of M95 and none of M96. After examination of the software logs later that day I noticed I had entered the commands to the scope incorrectly, and alas the issue was not with faulty software, but with faulty human operator :)
Anyway, I did get a pretty good image of M95, and as soon as the skies clear and the moon leaves I'll go for M96 again.
The object centering function is still not working correctly (and I really believe it is a software or hardware problem this time and not human error) so I had to crop the image a bit.
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