25 Mar 2014. I had another nice night, so I took another image, this time of NGC 3184, the Little Pinwheel Galaxy, which was a new target for me. I’m a little surprised I hadn’t tried this one before, because it is easy to find, even with just a Telrad; it sits right next to µ UMa, which is pretty easily visible from my back yard (but I’m routinely using the PicGoto to find everything now). I did use µ UMa as my sync star. I had an unusual number of satellite trails early in this session. One nice thing is that I’m getting good enough guiding now that I’m not afraid to use longer subframes. I could see the surface brightness of this target was low, so I decided to use 600-sec subframes and they worked fine (or at least they did until the breeze started gusting a bit). The other nice thing about the PicGoto is that it makes doing meridian flips easy (I guess I’ve commented on that before, but it is such a contrast with doing it the old way “by hand” that it just seems remarkable to me). I’ve been having trouble with PHD2’s guiding calibration after the meridian flip; PHD2 has an option to flip the coordinates, but it always seemed to come out backward anyway. Then I realized I was flipping them in the PicGoto software (via the “invert” check box) and in PHD2 too. Two flips = no flip! Duh!
Date: 24 Mar 2014
Subject: NGC 3184, Little Pinwheel Galaxy
Scope: AT8IN + HPS Coma Corrector
Filter: None
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.2.2 (Win 7 ASCOM)
Camera: DSI IIc no chiller T = 9 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.0, no dither
Exposure: 26 x 600 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.75 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.279 Crop; Wipe 82%; Develop 87.49%; Contrast; HDR:Optimize; Sharpen; Deconvolute 2.2; Color (Scientific) sat. 275%; Life:Isolate, mask fuzz 24.7; HDR:Equalize; Life:Optimize; Track read noise compensation 75.98%;. CS6 Astronomy Tools increase star color; Levels; Space noise reduction; Deep space noise reduction; Astro Frame.
Subject: NGC 3184, Little Pinwheel Galaxy
Scope: AT8IN + HPS Coma Corrector
Filter: None
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.2.2 (Win 7 ASCOM)
Camera: DSI IIc no chiller T = 9 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.0, no dither
Exposure: 26 x 600 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.75 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.279 Crop; Wipe 82%; Develop 87.49%; Contrast; HDR:Optimize; Sharpen; Deconvolute 2.2; Color (Scientific) sat. 275%; Life:Isolate, mask fuzz 24.7; HDR:Equalize; Life:Optimize; Track read noise compensation 75.98%;. CS6 Astronomy Tools increase star color; Levels; Space noise reduction; Deep space noise reduction; Astro Frame.
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