[Dennis]

Hi

After a long time indoors due to the cloudy nights, I managed to get out again last night/this morning for a session of imaging. It took me 2 hours to carry out, set up, configure and calibrate the system – I’d forgotten how hard life can be without a permanent set up! I’m still experimenting with guiding with the WO 80mm ED and Orion Deep Space Star Shoot using a GPUSB adapter and PHD Guiding, so chose M46 for two images with two different systems, both auto guided by the WO 80mm.

Vixen ED102S f9 and Pentax *istDS DSLR.
Celestron C9.25 f10 and SBIG ST7E ccd.

Here are the results, at the opposite end of the imaging scale.

Cheers

Dennis

The Pentax *ist DS image is a stack of 50 exposures of 30 secs each, aligned and combined in ImagesPlus.

The ST7E images is a stack of 25 exposures of 60 secs each, aligned and combined in MIRA AP. Auto darks were applied in camera, no Flats were taken (I forgot!).

Object name: NGC 2437 (M46), Magnitude: 6.1, Size: 20.0 x 20.0
Object type: Open Cluster
Dreyer description : Remarkable!, cluster, very bright, very rich in stars, very large, involved planetary nebula.

Object name: NGC 2438, Magnitude: 10.8, Size: 1.3 x 1.3
Object type: Planetary Nebula
Dreyer description : Planetary nebula, pretty bright, pretty small, very little extended, resolvable, but mottled, 3".75 diameter.