I have managed a very short exposure of M16 Eagle Nebula between the clouds. Clear skies are in short supply this week. We have no moon - which is known for creating clouds. I'm on holiday this week. More clouds created. And Greg in the New Forest has got his new equipment almost up and running. Many many clouds created!

A couple of clear hours last night enabled me to test the fixed up guide camera under the skies. I knew the clouds were coming so I ran off 10 x 120s frames of the M16 region. This is a very bright emission nebula and star forming region made famous by the classic Hubble shot of the "pillars of creation".

The camera had a 6nm Astrodon Hydrogen Alpha on it and I operated the camera in 2x2 binning mode to get lots of signal in short time.

The result was somewhat better than I expected for only 20 minutes of exposure time.

The guide camera isn't working properly. Very noisy - so much so that the guiding software kept loosing the guidestar with predictable results.

M16 Eagle Nebula