First Proper Night of Astrophotography

So having failed miserably to try to spot Asteroid DA14 2012 the night before due to cloud, I was ready to dive in and try my new camera adapter. I did some messing during the day with the camera mounted on the telescope focusing on some sheep on nearby hill, the furthest objects I can see from the garden, as near as to infinite focus as I could get. I tried some clouds, but they were just too vague. I put a mark on the focus ring to indicate roughly where focus was and set the camera's eyepiece focus.

Warmup

Simple shot of Orion, camera on normal tripod.

Orion

ISS Pass

I wasn't really prepared for it, but it was a great pass at about magnitude -3.0. A bit blurry, not sure if it was focus, or if tripod wasn't placed very firmly.

ISS zips past the Moon

Moon

First shot using the 'scope. Easily the biggest success of the night, but it's pretty hard to get wrong.

It's the moon!

Jupiter

The conventional wisdom is that webcams taking many shots is the way to go for planets, and I think this bears-out that theory. Need to figure out if I can capture the moons as well. Still, it's recognisable at least.

Jupiter

Orion Nebula (M42)

Cloud rolled in at this point and I was only able to get 2 shots - not enough to get the focus sorted. But I'm still showing the result as I think it shows that a great shot is possible.

M42

Menkalinan (Aur β)

Once the cloud had past, there weren't too any easily available interesting targets (that I knew how to find), so I picked this random target in a nice clear patch of sky to work on focus and tracking. It's tricky, but I think I'm getting there.

Menkalinan (Aur β)

Leo Triplet (M65, M66)

2 out of 3 of these pretty faint galaxies. Pleased I managed to find them. They were sitting above the worst source of local light pollution for me, so may have had an impact. A little bit of proccessing to help bring them out. Another shot that needs lots of work.

M65, M66

All-in-all I learnt a lot and had fun! Next steps, more work on focus and start trying to stack multiple shots.