The frustration of astrophotography

Its not all fun and games. Some times your out there for hours trying to find your subject and when you get your photos it doesnt quite go to plan. Such was the case last night. Several hours trying to find the faint and hard to spot Galaxy M101 for a second attempt, it took ages and was driving me nuts but after several hours I finally saw it on my camera screen after taking picture after picture. Very faint even with good dark skies. Galaxys are hard to find. I have given up trying to find them with the telescope and now I use my Camera to find them.

By putting the SLR camera on the telescope and pointing the scope in the right area I then take several 30 second shots and look at them carefully. Most times the Galaxys show up as gray blobs with faint traces of the spiral arms but its a lot faster finding them this way.

After hours with M101 a lot of my shots were suffering from star trailing and blur due to not being guided. I do have an auto guider and this has confensed me to get it set up once and for all.

Any way after all that I turned my telescope on to the Leo Triplets in DUH Leo. The first time I had seen them and only got a few quick shots but they are amazing.

Cant wait to have another go at them .