Antares area and the Blue Horse Head NGC6144 &IC4592

This part of the sky is so full of stars you are looking at a hugely reduced number of stars. This is the first time I have been able to find a target that I think would suit my fathers prime lens Nikon 85mm F1.8 D lens. The lens lends itself to night sky photos a prime no vibration reduction and the lens has a manual ring to select the right Fstop..


Most Nikon primes are not very good wide open as the tend to suffer very badly from coma problems I first started at F2.8 but it looked like there was no batwing stars in the corners but on stacking the sky was full of bat wing stars the nights shots were dumped. In the end I went with the tried and true F4. the sad part was I was to be plagued with smoke from burn offs.

I went from a 10 min exposure to a 5 min exposure in the end to try and help with the very bright stars. At the end of this it is get everything set up to take the reflector and to make life easier for myself. I have lowered the leg height to the lowest so the scope does not sit too high only to find the stainless steel legs are so badly squashed out of shape only movement you have is a 1Kg hammer to adjust the legs.So it is remove the legs and see just how much I can salvage from the old legs so I can adjust the mount to get it level. I have to cut about 2/3 off the legs off so as to get a leg that allows you to adjust by normally by hand. I have not found a a replacement for the legs so its a full replacement only thing I have left is cut the bad part of the less off.

this is an area of the sky that has so much colour my very first try to capture this area of the sky.




no auto focus this way but this is the manual focus with a Bahtinov mask.



ZWOASI071MC -10 104 shots per night
300 sec rotated over two night.
MeLE Mini PC
Pegasus Astro Pocket Mini power box
Nikon 85 mm f1.8 D Lens
Skywatcher NEQ 6 Pro Hypertuned
Guided PHD2, Nina
Pixinsight, Ps Lr.