Last night

[Fay]

Tried to get 2 of Mike's challenges, last night. Operative word being, tried.

It was thick frost before I even got going. The CLS filter on the Canon went foggy although the dew strips kept the scopes clear, which I was pleased about.
All the equipment was covered in thick frost, including me.

I had the Canon on the ZS66 with FR. Probably because of the cls filter, I could not see much, with 300 secs exposures.
The nebula in Auriga NGC1931, I never saw a sign of it. I had the very centre of the barred spiral, IC342,  in Cameorpardis on the chip but it was so very small with no other detail visible. I slewed to M33 & NGC 891 to make sure I was on target, which I was.

I changed the camera to the ED80, but still could not really see anything, only a bit more of the  centre of IC342, which was still very small. No hint of anything else.

I think this is a large spiral but is hard to see because of obscuring matter.

I should have stayed with the Moon as it was very nice early on in the evening.

Fay

[JohnP]

Fay - They are both very small NGC1931 is only 6 arcmins & IC342 is a bit larger at approx 21 arcmins. With the EOS on the ZS66 with .8X FR you get aprox 250X170 arcmins FOV.... I'm not suprised you didn't see much...

John

[MarkS]

Fay,

Well done for trying!

I came home from work, saw the murky sky and decided to stay indoors.

Mark

[Mike]

I stayed inside with a nice hot cup of coffee and soldered up some circuits on a stripboard

[Fay]

Oh, John, that explains it. Should have used the Atik. Never mind, I had a go.

[Mike]

...and a longer focal length than the ZS66 which is VERY wide.

[JohnP]

Yep Atik & ED80 would have been a better option for both... that gives you approx 50X38 arcmins - John