Gabriela Mistral Nebula and Gem Cluster

[etill]

Last night in the South East of Melbourne seemed ok at first, but it ended up pretty hot most of the night and quite bright even without the moon.

I think I have got the setup of the mount and alignment worked out now, I was able to do 180+ seconds unguided without elongation of stars, but the images looked pretty terrible. I thought maybe the exposure was too long so I went back to 90, but these also looked terrible. I have a feeling it was the heat as the camera was claiming between 30 and 34c for each exposure.

Last week it was close to 24c for most shots and a similar part of the sky, but since this is really only my second attempt it could be anything..

How much difference does 6 to 10 degrees make to noise?

I think I got rid of the noise ok with pixinsight, but it has started to look kind of over done and is still pretty grainy.

I managed 29 x 90sec ISO 400 shots
30 Dark, Flat and 60 Bias (using SuperBias again)
Vixen R200 F/4, CGEM mount and an unmodified Canon 60D with Baader MPCC.
All processing was pixinsight.

I'm still not sure which way is supposed to be up, so I just leave the camera in the scope the way it is in case I can reuse flats.

I have a bunch of NGC55 images to do next, but it was sitting right above my tin roof so I'm not holding my breath for those.

[Paulyman]

Not sure why this has no comments, perhaps it got missed in the Christmas and new year break. I think you have done a good job given the conditions. Some of the gurus on the Cloudy Nights forums mention noise doubling every 6 degrees. So a change of 6 degrees would be quite noticeable as you have seen.

[spiezzy]

looks pretty darn good to me Elliot nicely framed to be great to see your images of NGC 55
keep them coming vey impressed
cheers Pete

[Fernando]

So beautiful!