tomato

Thanks, I'm a bit underwhelmed if I'm honest. Wim is welcome to the data, as it was his wonderful image that inspired me to spend this much time on it, but I wouldn't want to turn his silk purse into a sow's ear.

Right, I'm at 24 hrs of integration, and calling it a day (or should that be night?) at that. I have again gone easy on the noise reduction to try and preserve some detail in the spiral arms, there is perhaps the very faintest of hints of a tidal tail between NGC 2460 and IC2209 so it was a worthwhile exercise. It has been nice to image a target high in the sky with steady guiding at the start of each session recently, but there are now a lot of tempting galaxy targets starting to get into good positions.

I agree, I can’t see dew hanging around for that long. You can get horizontal lines on your subs if the USB limit is set too low, but the pattern on your flats looks too irregular for this. I set my limit to 40 which was the recommended figure, this seems to work.

I know it is a pain to remove the camera but if you suspect dew or ice, this will be readily visible on the sensor window, and it will confirm the cause of the problem.

The camera is now at the RC repair facility, now awaiting assessment and the quote for the repair.

The flares do look intriguing with a lot of apparent structure visible. However, there do seem to be similar artefacts on the other bright stars in the image (top LH corner and the star just below the word ‘filter’), so I don’t think it’s a cosmic phenomenon. Anything else changed on your imaging set up?

Wonderful trio of images, each very impressive in it's own right. They would be great material for one of those "zooming through the Universe" type of animations.

No success with the animation, the object is just too faint. I’m not sure how the stack created the x shaped object but the location certainly indicates that the asteroid is the source. I intend to image the galaxy again tonight, that should confirm it.

The sobering comparison of the relative brightness of a hydrogen bomb detonated against your eyeball and a SN 93 million miles away comes to mind...

I’ll sort out the subs tomorrow and do a little gif animation to see if that sheds some light on it. Back to the SN, what a show for astronomers living in a (not too) nearby spiral arm of NGC 4216.

That was a possibility (I had a lacewing giving me weird diffraction spikes on that scope at the start of the session) but the object is on the other scope at the same location so I don’t think it is scope or camera in origin.

Yes, tracking for around 45 minutes. If it isn’t a satellite, any other suggestions?

That could be me heading for Guantanamo Bay then.😉

Here is the annotated image:

Yes @wimvb's image of this trio of galaxies doesn't show it either. My money would be on a geostationary satellite, but it would have to be a pretty darn big one, it's approx 23" in diameter, that's roughly twice the apparent diameter of the ISS. Do planetarium packages like Stellarium show these?

Finally managed to image this last night, Lum only as my extended unattended session did not play ball. SN 2024gy is still clearly visible with 46 mins of integration. But what is that curious dragonfly shaped object to the bottom right of the centre galaxy? It isn't a specific scope/camera artefact as it is present on the Red channel data that I managed to collect, which is a duplicate scope and camera, see close up crops below. I have checked other images of this area and can't see it, any ideas? If it is a drone then it stayed stationary for quite a while, could it be a geostationary satellite? If so then I'm chuffed that I captured it in some detail! Crop of Lum image: Crop of Red channel image:

Finally managed to image this last night, Lum only as my extended unattended session did not play ball. SN2024gy is still clearly visible with 46 mins of integration. But what is that curious dragonfly shaped object to the bottom right of the centre galaxy? It isn't a specific scope/camera artefact as it is present on the Red channel data that I managed to collect, which is a duplicate scope and camera, see close up crops below. I have checked other images of this area and can't see it, any ideas? If it is a drone then it stayed stationary for quite a while, could it be a geostationary satellite? If so then I'm chuffed that I captured it in some detail! Crop of Lum image: Crop of Red channel image:

Whilst trying to align the cameras on my dual rig tonight, I noticed a very prominent single diffraction spike on one scope, and even more weird, it changed position and shape between each 3 second exposure. I peered down the dewshield with a torch but could see nothing, so I returned to the laptop to see the spike had disappeared and then suddenly re-appear! More determined this time, I slid the dewshield back to reveal a very torpid lacewing crawling around the edge of the lens and then deciding to stride across it. In the end I had to blow him off with a hairdryer. He may have left some poo on the lens so I will need to sort that out without delay.

I briefly imaged with an Esprit 150 on an EQ6, and this gave acceptable results, guiding at 0.5” total RMS and imaging at 1.06” per pixel.

Of course the other way of revealing faint spiral arms and tidal interactions is to convert to black and white, invert the image and apply a radical stretch. There might be traces of IFN there, or more likely my uneven background.

The ASI 178s have retro fitted Peltier coolers, which basically stabilise the sensor temp so the calibration with dark frames is more consistent. These are essential as even a 2 minute sub generates significant amp glow. The ASI 678 has no amp glow so I am using it uncooled with a 2 minute exposure time, this seems to generate useable data.

It had a built in cloud gun but it doesn’t seem to be working.

My camera is currently delayed at Roissy Charles de Gaulle, not the dreaded Air Traffic Controllers by any chance?🙄

I have had 3 PCs viewable with TeamViewer, but they do occasionally grumble about me only using the free license. They have been quiet on this front recently though. Over time I have noted that I frequently spot an issue when monitoring from inside the house which requires me to go outside to the point that I might as well stay out there. Then at some point I set it up for unattended imaging and then leave it alone to run and finish in the early hours. I then take a look the next day to see how successful the run has been, around 80-90% of the sessions are cut short by cloud.

I did promise to take this one out to 20+ hours of integration to see what the spiral arms would look like, but blimey, it's hard going with the lack of clear nights. This one is 17.57 hrs of integration albeit about a third of that captured under a full moon. I have tried to minimise the noise reduction so any discernible structure in the spiral arms is still visible. This is presented at native resolution (0.47" per pixel), I tried a x2 down sample to improve the SNR but it just made the detail in the core more difficult to retain without improving the spiral arms significantly. This target is always well placed for me so I can return to it but I would like to try and image something new.