I was excited about my success with the Orion Nebula yesterday, so I tried to get a view of three galaxies. The Leo Trio is a set of three galaxies that are close enough in the sky to fit in the same camera frame, even with the magnification of my telescope.
Unfortunately for me, these galaxies are really faint and are hard to see from my back yard, even with a long exposure. Also my exposure time was limited tonight because the mount just wasn't aligned well enough, and despite messing with it, I couldn't get it to track well enough for longer than a 30s exposure. If I could see the north star from my back yard, it would be so much easier to align the mount for 60s-120s exposures without noticeable star trails.
Even touching up the image with Gimp's brightness/contrast sliders, I needed to draw big arrows on the picture to point out where the galaxies are.
