I spent the last two weeks on astro holidays in Namibia. Unfortunately the
weather wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be with only four fantastic
nights in two weeks (and 2 or 3 partly clear nights).
Even though nights were about nine hours long I only managed rather short
exposure times for the two objects I imaged in each of those clear nights.
The reason for this was that I had to fight the traps and pits of the rather
abysmal "Starbook" attachment to the Vixen New Atlux mount I hired for my
stay. The mount itself was good (except for a very large backlash in dec),
but the Goto controller (Starbook) really cost me a lot of time.
In one of the partly clear nights I used my QHY8 camera to image NGC 55, one
of our galactic neighbours.
Taken from the middle of Namibia ;-) with a 10" Meade ACF scope at about
2100mm focal length (AP reducer) on a Vixen Atlux mount, QHY8 camera, 7x15
minutes resized to 66%.
The picture can also be found at
http://ccd-astronomy.de/temp3/55-7x15smallgut.jpg
Stefan