Astrophotography at the Veluwe Logbook, results, lessons learned

La Palma

I was in La Palma in the past two weeks. I took my travel astro equipment with me by plane. Total weight for this equipment is about 10-12kg, including laptop, star atlas, EOS 350D with 2 lenses and Powergrip, Min-EQ mount with contra-weight and RA motor and handcontroller, heavy(!) 12V battery for the RA motor and several cables for computer control of the lot.

I managed to take about 100-150 8Mb RAW frames on 4 nights and did the computer processing in following days. The accuracy of the Min-EQ mount allows exposure times of 1-3 min when using the 135mm lens. Max exposure time depends on Declination of the object and of the accuracy of the polar alignment that I needed to do every evening.

I have a total of seven satisfactory end results. I reported detailed info in the results section:

• overview of Orion with the Barnard's Loop
• a detailed Orion view with the Belt and the Sword
• The Witchhead Nebula in Orion near Rigel
• Rosette Nebula in Monoceros
• California nebula
• The M41 star cluster near Sirius
• two star clusters in Puppis.

Apart from astrofotography I used my 10x50 binoculair to view several deepsky objects that cannot be seen from latitudes above northern Africa. The best  object was the globular cluster Omega Centauri. It was really special to view the brightest global cluster of both hemispheres. Next time in La Palma I will definitely take pictures of ω Centauri