First clear couple of hours for what seems like ages, so out went the Skywatcher. And my first target was M57, really struggled with the finderscope and in the end decided to crouch behind the scope and look along the whole OTA, of course the problem then was locking the drive cams without the tube moving!

Anyway, first look through the EP and Bingo! Looked very odd through the EP wasn't quite sure what it was at all except that I knew something odd lurked in the neighbourhood.

Quickly nipped inside to grab the DSLR and hooked it up at prime focus, took a couple of tracked pics at 20 seconds exposure. Errrm, quite chuffed with the result


Canon 350d at prime focus of Skywatcher 200mm Newtonian 20 seconds ISO 400.

M57 is in the bottom right of this photo and looks like a smoke ring to me!

cheers
Mitch