Messier 15
With some clear skies and no moon last night, I used this opportunity to make my first attempt at photographing a deep sky object using the ASI120MM camera. This camera is designed for planetary and lunar imaging, but it can be used for deep sky.
The local conditions are not ideal for deep sky, with the high light pollution levels, so I opted to go for a relatively easy and bright object, thus choosing M15, which was well positioned in the sky.
M15 is a bright globular cluster in Pegasus with a magnitude of 6.2, and roughtly 18’ diametre.
I generated the image by taking 84x20 second monochrome exposures, and then stacking the best 24 exposures into the image below using SharpCap, Autostakkert, Registax and Gimp to process the image.
The results are not overly fantastic, but with this being my first attempt I am relatively pleased with the results.
Taken with a ZWO ASI120MM camera attached to a Sky Watcher 200 PDS Explorer 8” mounted on a HEQ-5 motorised equatorial mount.