I’m home in Ottawa, confined to quarters by the covid quarrantine but last night was clear so i got out in my side yard for a look. I haven’t go my mount set up but I wanted to see if i had a clear enough view of the pole to do alignment. I would say no problem – polaris is high enough in the sky to stay well clear of houses and i have a decent view between my house and my neighbour’s.
I figured i was aimed close enough to polaris to get it in my field of view but nope. NGC3172 in the bottom right is the charmingly named Polarissima Borealis – it’s not really visible in my image but i still like the name.
I’m looking forward to having the mount set up. I still won’t be able to do a multi star alignment but i had good luck finding things in florida just based on solid polar alignment. I suspect Polarissima Borealis is hopeless because it’s small and faint but there are a bunch of galaxies in the general area M81, M51, M101 should be in easy view.
UPDATE: After much poking around I identified the reddish star to the right in my image as OV Cep – a 5th magnitude star. The dimmest stars are around magnitude 10-11. Seeing was quite good and my focus is good. My image was taken at ISO 1600 for 3.2 sec at f/4 using the Takumar 200mm lens on the Canon t3i. I’m pretty happy with the lens and it’s about as much power as i can handle.
Astrophotography Newbie 