As you will know we had a rare beautifully clear Moonless night last night – time for some serious imaging! I had planned to grab IC1831, a ball of stars very close to the Heart nebula, quite some while back. 10-minute subs and 6 hours total exposure time – what more do you want? Well – camera problems (I haven’t got a clue what’s wrong with it yet, but it behaves as if there’s water vapour in the cell – but there isn’t – and it’s intermittent as well!) meant that I only got 18 subs (3-hours) out of the 36 that were useful – incredibly frustrating. Also – I’m not that overwhelmed by IC1831 itself. If you look this up on “The Sky 6” you see this incredible ball of stars just sitting off the Heart nebula. Well I guess the ball of stars is there – but it is less impressive than some of the deep images I’ve taken in the Milky Way region of Cassiopeia (near CTB1). So a mixed night of highs, lows and general indifference – not good for 6 hours of quality imaging time 🙁
