Friday, 9 October 2015, was partly cloudy and very windy. But as sunset approached the wind died down and the sky became mostly clear.

Open: Friday, 9 October 2015, 1815 MST Temperature: 77°F

Session: 866 Conditions: Mostly clear

1822 MST: viewed Saturn, 83X. The view was not very good due to Saturn being low in the southwestern sky and clouds in the area.

I then began preparing the D7200 DSLR for DSO imaging. 1839 MST: my visitor (Giant Crab Spider) returned again this night.

Slewed to Alpha Pegasus, which would be the focus test star. 1858 MST: mounted the D7200 DSLR at prime focus + extension + off-axis guider. 1906 MST: did a focus test image using the Bahtinov Mask:

Then slewed to the RA/Dec for the "Einstein Cross" in Pegasus (22h 40m 30.3s, +3° 21' 31"). Found a good guide star. I was now ready to try to image this faint (Magnitude +16.78) and small (< 2 arcsec) object.

2020 MST: I began a 10 minute, ISO 6400, guided exposure. Would I capture Einstein Cross using an 8" telescope and DSLR?

This is the full-frame image with the possible location of the Einstein Cross marked:

This magnified view from the full sized image (6000x4000 pixels) shows what I believe to be the Einstein Cross:

At least, the look matches the images on the Wikipedia page above. And I didn't see anything else on the full size image that looked similar.

So, it is possible that I captured the Einstein Cross with my Meade 8" LX200-ACF!

Close: Friday, 9 October 2015, 1951 MST Temperature: 67°F

Session Length: 1h 36m Conditions: Clear

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This was a planned short session as I would be attending several events at Oracle State Park, our local IDA "International Dark Sky Park", on Saturday, 10 October.

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