I was stupid enough 2 weeks ago to have an go at imaging during that horrible Sydney heat wave where temperatures at night were pushing close to 30deg C together with high humidity. Hey it was a clear night , bloody hot but clear
Conditions were very poor to say the least , Star Scintillating like crazy and my camera struggled to get up to -9C , ended up around -8.5C ( I usually have no issue cooling to -10C with plenty of power spare )
Anyway captured only 2 hours of data on NGC 5128 , a Galaxy I haven’t imaged in Sydney for over 2 years.
Broadband targets like galaxy’s under Sydney’s heavy LP ( Bortle 7 to 8 ) is a real struggle , not impossible but you just need hours and hours and hours of data to expose some fine detail plus mitigate the gradients.
My little trusty $200 6” f6 Newt
EQ6-R pro mount
ZWO2600MC camera
No filters ( only the internal UV/ IR Cut protective window of the 2600MC )
122 x 60 sec subs dithered
40 x Flats
60 x Bias
PHD2 Multistar guiding ( 0.70 to 0.80 arc sec total ) poor
Stacked in DSS
Processed in Startools v1.8
Link to Astrobin
https://www.astrobin.com/x2kr1x/
Anyway massaged some sort of image out of the small amount of noisy data
Native frame version
Crop version
Comments welcome
Thanks