Two Thirty in the Morning!

So I mentioned the other day that I was setting up two of my Go-To telescope mounts to refresh my memory about how to calibrate them.  I was finally successful with both mounts and it felt good to be familiar with them.  Unfortunately the weather forecast for the next 10 days calls for clouds each night.  There was one more thing I wanted to re-learn, and that is how to set up and operate a dedicated astronomy camera, and the little controlling device that makes it run.  Both of those are operated from software in my iPad, and trust me on this, the software is really complicated and it does not have an intuitive interface which makes it doubly hard to operate.  So last night it was supposed to be clear by 10 PM but it was not so I abandoned the idea of relearning how to set up the camera and controller.  But then at midnight it cleared!  So I quickly set everything up, the mount the telescope, the camera and the controller.  I slowly figured out what to do and so after an hour or so I was ready to try to take a photograph.  I did not expect much.  I made the first exposure and saw two faint blobs so I knew the subject was in the field of view.  The way this works is, that the device keeps taking photographs (at about 10 seconds of exposure each) and then the software "stacks" one on top of another. Well after a few minutes, each time a new exposure was added the galaxies got brighter and brighter, until after abut 5 minutes I got this!  I was stunned, and really thrilled!  I finished up at 2:30 in the morning, exhausted, but thrilled at what I had been able to do, finally!  This is a photograph of The Whirlpool Galaxy which includes two galaxies that are interacting with each other.  It is believed that the smaller galaxy passed through the larger galaxy and you are seeing the results of this "tidal interaction."  In any case, this is perhaps one of the most spectacular galaxies that we can see.  So now to  completely diminish my small accomplishment, please go click on this Hubble image by the European Space Agency of the two.  It will knock you socks off!