Table Mountain

With a new moon and clear skies forecast for last weekend, Tony and I decided to head up to Table Mountain for an evening of observing and astrophotography. We loaded up my truck and headed out at 3:00 PM on Saturday. On arrival we discovered that the road was still blocked by snow about a mile from the summit, and in fact there was someone stuck in the snow that we helped tow out (I have a 4X4). I didn't think we'd make it to the top, so we set up in a big meadow right before the snow line.

After unloading the truck and setting up camp and the telescope, we cooked a fine dinner of cowboy beans and waited for the sun to set. As we waited, a few other observers arrived and set their gear up. Venus was the first to appear in the cloudless, dark sky.

Here's Tony relaxing and waiting for dark (click to enlarge):

We spent a couple of hours looking at various targets including M13, M31, M57, Saturn, Venus, Mars, and several others. Around midnight Tony got tired and crawled into his tent to sleep, and I broke out the Nikon to start taking pictures.

My first target was M57. I recently purchases a Bhatinov mask to help with focusing, and it REALLY helped. I was able to get pinpoint focus within just a couple of minutes. I started snapping 30-second shots of M57, and then realized I had left the focusing mask on :). After correcting that little problem, I proceeded to take about 30 exposures.

I then imaged M31, NGC6703, and NGC6946. After that I took the camera off the 'scope and tried taking a few wide-angle shots. I wrapped up at around 2:00 AM and went to bed.
The next morning we packed up and headed home, where I downloaded the data I had capture and started processing. Unfortunately the only shots that came out well were the ones of M57:

Here's M31. As I said, not very good:

Here's a shot of my telescope and camp site taken just after sunset (click to enlarge):

Overall it was a great trip. I really need to get a wedge and autoguiding setup to I can take longer exposures.