Night 10:
We went to the Musk around 8 pm to catch the comet but a tiny clouds
line above the hill at West side was here just to hide Pan-STARRS. So
we did the alignment and the calibration thanks to Betelgeuse, Mizar,
Dubhe, Spica, Vega and Castor. We observed Jupiter and we decided to
replace our first alignment star Betelgeuse by Capella. We plugged the
CCD and did the focus. Then we took the Orion Nebula in a long session
time. After that we looked at some clusters and galaxies. But tracking
method had some troubles and failed multiple of our shots. We waited
for the comet until 5 am and we saw it in the binoculars. We tried to
put Pan-STARRS and M31 in the small refractor but the small refractor
is clearly not aligned with the big telescope and its focus was very
strange. So we concluded that it was impossible to achieve the
challenge photo op. We finished our session by observing M31 in the
telescope and the comet in the binoculars.
List of (really) grabbed and tracked objects :
Stars: Dubhe
Clusters: M5
Nebulae and galaxies: Orion Nebula (NGC1976), M31, M51
The rest is too bad...
Francois, the astronomer