A solid evening of EAA

With the full moon a week away and an upcoming trip, I decided to do some EAA for what could be the last time in April. I started around 10pm with the moon soon to be blocked by the house and went until 1:30am.

I had prepared a long list of targets - a comet, a couple of dwarf planets, globular clusters and many galaxies - some of which I had never seen. I did not manage to go through the whole list but it was still a solid evening of EAA.

I started with the moon through the bino viewers then switched to the camera with the 0.75x FR using bias/dark and flat frames. I did 60x2s stacks on every single target.

I was doing a reset of the EQ platform before each one and but only half way. The movement of the table are always jerky at the beginning when the telescope weight is on the motor side and get better later on. Skipping the beginning made for a smoother tracking with no need to change the speed. Not sure why it took me a year to think about that. I had also used double sand paper on the table side and the axle (I've been doing that for the axle for a while actually), but I'm not sure if that made a difference.

Observations:

Moon (first quarter): with bino viewers then with the camera (did a 50 frames movie and then stacked the best frames with Lynkeos)
HCG 44 aka Leo Quartet Galaxy Group - Leo
116P/Wild comet - Leo
NGC 3521 Bubble Galaxy - Leo
C45 Galaxy - Bootes
Haumea - Dwarf planet - Bootes - 7.4 billion km away and mag 17.4!!
Had a quick look at M5 Rose Cluster - Serpens - really low but did not take a picture (I was still using resetting the EQ platfom then)
M3 Globular Cluster - Canes Venatici
NGC 5466 aka Mel 124 aka Snowglobe Cluster - Bootes
M53 Globular Cluster - Coma Berenices
NGC 5053 Globular Cluster - Coma Berenices
M104 Sombrero Galaxy - Virgo
C60/61 aka NGC 4038/4039 aka Antennae Galaxies - Corvus
M68 Globular Cluster - Hydra
M61 Swelling Spiral Galaxy - Virgo
NGC 4526 Galaxy - Virgo
NGC 4535 Lost Galaxy of Copeland - Virgo
M49 Galaxy - Virgo
M51 Whirlpool Galaxy - Canes Venatici