I’ve been glad of the cloud cover, it gave me a chance to catch up on my sleep! Last night was unexpectedly clear and I set everything up while cooking dinner. My first target was NGC2403 a galaxy in Camelopardalis which I’ve targetted before as it’s a bright galaxy near the northern meridian. Being so far north reduces the Periodic Error (PE) as the motors don’t have to move the mount as much as when it point’s east or west. I still need to adjust the gear mesh again as I’m sure that carrying the mount in and out of the house puts a strain on the bearings.

After 2403 I stayed roughly in the Ursa Major constellation and managed to image M82 and M101 both galaxies from the Messier catalogue (M101 needs reprocessing as this image doesn’t look like the original). I then moved on to NGC6939 an open cluster in Cepheus before finally catching the M3 Globular Cluster in Canes Venatici. With work only hours away I retired to my bed and left the processing for later.

NGC2403 in Camelopardalis 39×60 seconds	M82 in Ursa Major 15×60 seconds	M101 in Ursa Major 10×50 seconds
NGC6939 in Cepheus 7×40 seconds	M3 in Canes Venatici 14×30 seconds

Did you notice the images are upside-down? When I move east of the meridian the mount rotates so that images appear inverted. Maybe I’ll correct this before posting in future.