| Date: | April 21-22, 2023 |
| Location: | Cottonwood Spring, Joshua Tree National Park |
| Time | 20:00-2:00 (UTC-7) |
| Weather | clear with light breeze; 60°- 40° F |
| Bortle Scale | 3 |
| Elevation | 3,000 ft |
| Landscape | High Desert |
Equipment Used
- 8″ (203 mm) f/4.9 Newtonian Telescope
- Atlas II EQ-G Mount
- Orion 50mm Guide Scope w / Starshoot Autoguider
- Nikon d5300
- Meade Telextender 2X Barlow Lens
At first, the night did not go as planned as I wanted to try and image M 101 at f/10, but unfortunately I could tell right away in some of the early images that coma was present, thus the collimation was not quite right… thus I had to perform the task in the dark.
Since both of the Messier objects I intended to shoot were not going to rise in the sky until much later in the night, I went after some familiar targets that I hoped would improve compared to my last efforts shooting them.
When it came to M 5
M 71 also turned out good, and because M24 was too wide even for my f/5 Newtonian, M24 was shot with a 300mm telephoto lens on my Nikon instead.
But with them done, then that left me with only 5 Messier objects left to shoot.
ORION BEAR ASTRONOMY 