Stick it in the bin

I so nearly didn't bother with posting this... however... having had such a run of heavy cloud, I could actually see some stars on Thursday... I was wondering what it was I was looking at. Anyway... I've been waiting and waiting to try and add some more data to my M42 and see if I couldn't tease out the faint dusty regions around the main nebula. The plan being to ideally grab 4 hours of 10 minute exposures. Ah how plans never quite work out how you want...

Turns out, there was some thin cloud, not enough to spoil the view, but enough to spoil looking for the faint stuff, dew was terrible, within an hour, the OTA's were dripping, so of course, had to keep getting the hair dryer out... I don't get it, but my ST80 stayed much clearer with the after market camping mat fitted then the 80ED... have to look at that, but I suspect it's to do with the shape of the fitted dew shield.

And of course, it's a bit late in the year now to be trying something like this as with only 2 hours captured, Orion was sinking into the orange flow.

And then of course, there was the power... or rather lack of it.. my main battery died after a fair number of subs, to give it it's due, but the backup lasted 2 and the flats. Oh, the flats, I don't know what happened, but using the technique I always use, the flats were horribly under exposed, so they got ditched, as they introduced a pile of bright vignetting.

Then the laptop cooling fan developed an odd noise.. I'd have to say caused by dust, so need to take it apart and give the fan a good hoover.

Not a good night really... still... a couple of good points...

1) The guiding held without any issues, after the previous occasions fits in RA
2) APT works really well

Having written all this, I spose I'd better post the image, prior to consigning it to Dusty... (in case you're too young to remember... have a look for a TV program called 3-2-1 ... writing that makes me feel old).



Oh yes, I couldn't be bothered overlaying any of my previous bits of images to sort out the core, which is totally blown, although to be honest, it's the first time on a deep sky image, I've had the highlight clipping warning showing on the camera preview

And why is it, that despite adding the process tif to DSS, deselecting it, right clicking it and making it the reference frame, did DSS not align all the other frames on it ?