While I’m working on collecting data for M51, I decided to take the last couple hours of the morning on each night to also get some data of Vega. I occasionally like doing a bright star. This really shows the defects of a Newtonian telescope, but I kinda like the effects. The large cross coming off the star is due to diffraction from the spider vanes that hold the secondary mirror. The rest of the glow around the star is from diffuse reflections from parts of the optics.
Also, don’t miss the galaxy cluster in the bottom right corner. There’s a nifty edge-on and a spiral just below it.
