Activities on the 17th Dec

I finally managed to process the single RAW frame I shot of the moon this morning. I'm pleased with how it came out. I'm not sure, but I think the single RAW is as good as the stacked jpg's. I need to work out how to stack the RAW's

Here's the image



Early this evening, I looked out and could barely see Venus through the mist. Forget any stars. I was expecting that to be that for any astronomical activities, but I was wrong. The mist cleared away, and the sky filled with diamonds. I wasn't sure how long this was going to last, I could see more clouds on the horizon, so I popped the C80ED onto the Manfrotto PortaPod and headed out the front to get a look at M42 before the clouds rolled in.

I didn't start there though, and went highed to get a look at M45. I used the 17mm Hyperion, and I think the FOV was a little too tight, but I wasn't going to leave anything setup out the front whilst I went to get the 24mm Hyperion. Anyway, I had a good long look at the lovely sisters. What a view, clear and sharp pinpoints of light against the dark velvet sky.

I then swung down for a look at M42. Using the 17mm Hyperion I could make out the large shape of the bird of M42. Looking closely I could easily make out 3 of the trap stars with clear seperation between them and I starred for a while.

Then taking a look around I could see that the sky was clear, so I took the scope and portapod through to the backgarden and had a look around. I couldn't get a clear view with this tripod on the Double or the other targets in Perseus or Cassie, as it was too high. I decided that I would grab the NexStar setup and try some imaging. This was really more of a test session as I'd not tried this setup out on a deep sky target.

So, I leveled, powered up, carried out a one star align on Betelguese, and slewed to M42. Whilst I was waiting for the slew to complete I took some flats and flat darks. Then set about getting my lights. I shot a few test frames, and each one had drive errors evident. Hmm, I guessed that the balance on the C80ED in the tube rings wasn't quite right and adjusted it slightly, to provide a slight readward bias. This did the trick. I set the timer remote for 30 seconds and started grabbing data. Mid way through a bunch of clouds wandered through, so that lot were thrown away... As M42 clears my house it's already got a bit to far south for tracking in AltAz to go very long and I lost a few more subs to trailing. I ended up with 6 x 30 second subs. I then set for 2 seconds to try and grab a few subs with the trap. This worked nicely. Whilst I was capturing these a bunch of clouds settled in over Orion... Ah well.

Whilst the scope and camera were busy I used the 10x50's for a look around. The usual suspects, the Double Cluster, M45 and a general wander around the Milky Way. I noticed that Cancer was up and looking through the 10x50's I could clearly see The Beehive. So I sent the NexStar slewing off and grabbed my dark frames, which allowed time for the mount to settle.

Once the darks were complete, I set the timer remote to grab a bunch of frames on M44. I grabbed 30 in total, and lost half to clouds, which settled in and I gave up.


I've done a teeny amount of processing on a single 30s sub to see what it looked like. I can't believe the amount of Neb that has come through in a single frame. I don't know what the bar is, but I noticed it on several 30s subs moving across the frames, so maybe a real slow satellite... Anyway.. Here's the single frame.


I did something similar on M44, although I don't think I've framed it as well. That's ok though as this was a test session anyway. Here's a single frame with a similar amount of processing done.


The stack and post processing needs to be completed however on both sets, this will take some time, and I'll post the results as soon as they are available.