Finally the clouds clear

After endless rain and clouds for weeks, we have finally gotten some nice evenings. I was able to get to a semi-dark spot but still within a reasonable driving distance this past weekend and did a little imaging while socializing with the other astronomers there. Its not super dark, but better than my back yard. I am still waiting on my new ccd so I just hooked up my Nikon D40 to my CPC 800 and had a go at NGC 2403.

For 30 sec subs I was pretty happy with it. I still get alot of color blotching from the chip in my D40, but once I can get over the frustration of that I got to processing my stack of 249 subs. a heavy hand on the saturation allowed me to pull out some decent color from the arms, but nothing like I would get if I were on an equatorial mount. Same with the detail in the galaxy's arms, but all in all, not a bad result.

I am looking forward to my new camera getting in and getting back out to some more serious imaging. I have plenty of time to learn the new camera before our trip to Big Bend where I will finally get some seriously dark skies for the first time since our Yosemite trip.