Hi Everyone,
I must have paid off my debts to the bad karma gods as I had a completely different night yesterday, with very little issues in tracking, moon, clouds etc.
After resetting my mind and plonking the scope down, I seemed to fix the dodgy alignment using PHD and then the mount was tracking like a BOSS for almost 4 hours with no hiccups.
I have attached the PHD graph just to prove it
I decided to go for something fairly bright after my recent Abell 1060 galaxy cluster and settled on the ol' Horsey.
So, here is my third go with the new ATIK 314L+ (well, posted anyway)
I seem to have picked up a dust bunny, although the window is clear, so I think I may have to check out the secondary to find the culprit. Still no usable flats yet to get rid of it.
I hope you like it, exactly 1.5 hours of exposures (my new record) and countless Megs of processing files and hours today honing and hopefully processing this one OK.
Thanks for stopping by, any tips or critiques are welcome.
Image details:
Target: The Horsehead Nebula and NGC2023
Camera: Atik 314L+ OSC CCD
Scope: Skywatcher BD200N Reflector
Mount: HEQ5Pro
Guide: PHD guiding using EQmod and DBK21AU618 on Orion 50mm guidescope
Total Time: 1 hour and 30 mins
CCD Temp: -5 degrees Celsius
Exposures: 20 x 180 sec and 6 x 300 sec
Darks/Bias/Flats: 20 x 180 sec darks, no flats, 10 x 180 sec bias.
Capture Program: Artemis Capture
Processing: DSS, Startools, Photoshop CS3
Uncompressed Image : Link (5Mb PNG file)
Cheers
Chris