On saturday evening the 8th of November 2017 I captured this open cluster.
NGC 2516 is a open cluster in the constellation Carina. It was discovered by Abbe Lacaille in 1751-52.
It is also known as the Southern Beehive or Sprinter cluster.
This was not my intended target but a "Plan B".
Plan A was to try again for NGC 104. Sadly this dufus astronomer did not check one ore two test subs properly and missed the fact that something is not aligning straight and the right half of the image is distorted, like really bad coma.
So in order to salvage something from the situation without having to resort to a break down of the equipment to check all the fittings between camera and scope I opted to image a cluster and frame it over to the left of the sensor.
Then in processing I could cut the offending bits out.
So there is something to show after all, rather than a failed night we got some lemonade out of this one!
Particulars of the photo shoot as follows:
Skywatcher 102 on a alt/az goto mount.
Canon 1200D without astro mods.
Meade Nebular filter.
ISO 3200
50 X 25 second exposures.
Dark frames.
Flat frames.
Stacked in Deep sky stacker.
Processed mostly in PS with a touch up in Star tools.
First, the sky chart courtesy of Stellerium. Then the image of NGC 2516 and lastly the annotated version, courtesy of Astrometry.net
So while the cloud gods gave me some clear sky they gave my equipment a kick before I got started, none the less, here is the lemonade!
Hope you enjoyed plan B, any comments(good or bad) are welcomed.
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