Lobster, anyone? (and an Astrotortilla!)

I've run across a very cool piece of software called Astrotortilla. I love Mexican food, and Astrotortilla just sounds yummy! It's a Windows wrapper (hence the tortilla) program that works in conjunction with your imaging and mount control programs (via ASCOM, hence Windows-only) to do plate solving, automatic syncing, and automatic correction of your gotos. It's supposed to work fine with Nebulosity and PicGoto. I have it working OK for saved images with a simulated mount, but I still can't get Astrotortilla plate solves to work live. After watching the Astrotortilla log I think this is because the image file is not getting passed correctly from Nebulosity, and I seem to remember seeing something in the manual about that so I'll have to have another look. The capabilities of this program sound wonderful, and there are plenty of reports of happy users. I hope to add my voice to that.

But back to the imaging session.  I probably should not have tried to image at this scale (my full 800 mm focal length at f/4) with the wind issues and late start I had last night, but decided to do it because of the sky’s clarity and darkness. Synced on λ Sag and had an easy goto. It was another warm summer night; the camera started at 24 °C and with the Peltier running at 2.5 A I got the CCD down to 15 °C. The wind gusts made my guiding performance terrible, so besides starting late I threw out a lot of subframes and the result is noisy. In addition, I had issues with DEC motion; it seems like the mount is sticking. 

This is another target I can use for adding H-α later when the Moon is more full. So as you may deduce, I did succumb and bought a Baader Planetarium 7 nm H-α filter, which I'll start using when there is more Moon (tonight, if the sky is clear; I just can't resist doing full RGB imaging when the sky is dark). So hopefully soon I'll have some H-α data to play with and try blending with some of these RGB images. I'm slowly sliding down the slippery slope into narrowband imaging, I'm afraid. Another "not cheap" thing, too!

M17 is another beautiful deep sky object in the rough direction of the galactic core. Rotated 180° from the view below, it definitely looks like a swan, but in the orientation I've chosen, it looks more like a lobster to me. He's facing to the left. Can you see the lobster claw in the center on the left side? The bright part is the lobster's body.

Date: 1 Aug 2014

Subject: M17, Swan (or Omega or Lobster) Nebula

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, 15 °C

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.0, no dither

Exposure: 20x300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, no flats, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.279 Crop; Wipe:Color & brightness 80%; Develop 78.49%; HDR:Optimize; save; undo; HDR:Core reveal; Color:Scientific, 250%; Deconvolute auto mask 2.5 pix; Life:Moderate; Track RNC 1.47%; Magic:Shrink 1 pix; to the Core Reveal image: Color:Scientific, 250%; Deconvolute auto mask 0.49 pix; Magic:Shrink 1 pix; CS6 Astronomy Tools layer the HDR:Optimize image on top of the HDR:Core Reveal with 85% opacity; Increase star color; Less crunchy more fuzzy; Reveal all layer mask cut through in bright places; Astro Frame