Don't Try This at Home (in the Suburbs): Barnard's Galaxy

Since the sky was clearer than it had been in days (most of the smoke was blowing to the north, although I could smell some and there was an ominous smoke cloud in the direction of the Salt Lake Valley), and because the Moon was mostly not a factor, I decided to try a new, difficult, dark-sky target, Barnard's Galaxy. I've been more interested in trying this since seeing the Magellanic Clouds during my trip to Australia last fall. Anyway, I synced on Altair (again quite far from the target) and used the PicGoto to find NGC 6822. I had to hunt around for asterisms a bit, but once again the PicGoto came through for me. At 300 s exposure, I could just barely see Barnard's Galaxy in single subframes, and I expected the sky to darken as the night progressed (it did, but then I got clouds or something so after 3 hours it got much worse). I played with Deep Sky Stacker Live as I acquired this. I didn't keep the stack, but it was quite useful to see how the background brightness changed through the session. It was quite warm; the CCD started at 26 °C and at 2.5 A of current in my Peltier chip I got it cooled to about 18 °C. The air was also fairly still so my guiding was not terrible (that got worse too as the night progressed). All in all, this WAS a difficult target, one of those you are "not supposed to attempt from the suburbs," so I'm glad to have gotten something.

This is also the nearest galaxy I have imaged, with the exception of my "accidental" capture of both Magellanic Clouds from Canberra, Australia, when I was there last November.

Date: 21 Jul 2014
Subject: NGC 6822, Barnard’s Galaxy
Scope: AT8IN
Filter: Meade IR cut
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.3.0 (Win 7 ASCOM)
Camera: DSI IIc chiller at 2.50 A, 18 °C
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.0, no dither
Exposure: 36x300 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.279 Crop; Wipe:Color & brightness 77%; Develop 87.49%; Color:Scientific, 287%; HDR:Optimize; Life:Moderate; Deconvolute auto mask 1.5 pix; HDR: Tame; Track RNC 1.23%; Magic:Shrink 1 pix; CS6 Astronomy Tools Increase star color; Deep space noise reduction; Healing brush; Astro Frame.