M27 - well almost :)

[Ant]

Last night was fun...

Set everything up, everything was working fine. Then I noticed that every time a pulse was sent to the mount the red LED flashed. This means that the power was too low. I went to push the button to check the battery charge and hit the light in error - blinding myself.

I already had power out to the observing spot, to run the laptop. But it only has one socket (first lesson learnt). I went to get an extension lead. Of course unplugging the laptop and the mount meant that I had to start from scratch.

Put the power station on charge.

So 20 minutes later, everything is working again? - Well no actually. The mount doesn't like the juice from the mains to 12v converter (need to buy a 10amp bench power supply). So try all sorts of things including unplugging the Dew heaters - still not happy.

In the end an hour has passed. The power to the canon is being run from the mains to 12c convertor, the power station has enough juice in it to power the mount - but for how long...?

Found the target (M27), got the webcam guiding the mount, connected the camera to the ED80. Used the bolts to centre M27 in the FOV - I think I have around 3 degrees available of adjustment from one scope to the other. As I tightened the last bolt, I heard a horrible grinding noise and the bolt had eaten through the rubber cap and marked the tube - need to find a another method.

So pretty much anything that could go wrong went wrong.

By this time is 1am, I decide to try and get an hours kip, so everything is working. The mount is tracking. I went to bed setting my alarm for 2:30am.

Up at 2:30am, down stairs to see that the sky is starting to brighten in the NE, no sign of NCL. At around 3am I notice a slim crescent moon rising... Check the last image in the camera (a 4 minutes exposure of M27). It looks real nice.

Get into the kitchen at about 3:15 and start scrolling through the images and WTF, there is only 3.

1 x 2minute, 1 x 5 minute and 1 x 4 minute.

Pants I forgot to tell the laptop to start taking images... Won't be doing that again!!!!

But on the upside the 5 and 4 minutes shots do look good! - I'll stack them tonight and see what I get, shouldn't take long.

Ant

[CELESCOPE]

great fun this imaging ain,t it Ant , so looking foward to your results anyway

Rog

[steppenwolf]

Sounds like a nightmare. Your second to last sentence reminds me of the session I set up to take 20 'darks' at each of 200, 300, 400 and 600 second exposures. I hit the tit and went to bed - in the morning I went back to the dome to see a message on the screen saying words to the effect of 'Please Cancel Auto Dark Frame Subtraction for these Dark Frame Images - Click OK to proceed' ................................. GGGRRRRRrrrrrrr

[Vega]

"Are you sure u wish to perform these exposure settings?"

.... "Are you sure your sure?" :roll:

[Beyond_Vision]

I've done that my self Ant I thought my rig was happily imaging away for over an hour only to find I had kicked off the shutter control software but forgot to turn on the DSLR. Also done this when taking darks covered the scope over smugly thinking that my darks would be done and ready for when I wake up then only to find no darks and camera off.

Regards

Kevin

[MartinB]

Argghhh that's rough. Sometimes my whole imaging session feels like a stack of cards, there's so much [removed word] up potential. It's such a painful process learning the hard way about what can go wrong.

The one I still sometimes do is struggle to find any sort of focus and then realise the lens cap is still on. I then go and do exactly the same with the guidescope doh

[Ant]

OK here is the image. I am actually quite chuffed with this.

It is a little noisy, but for 4 images I guess it would be. I have carried the entire setup back into the garage as it is, so next time out it should be perfectly setup for having another go at M27 Knowing my luck it'll be six months and it won't be around

So 4 images

1 x 29 Seconds (only included as I REALLY needed all the data I could get)

1 x 120 Seconds

1 x 300 Seconds

1 x 240 Seconds - This was going to be the sub length - a play off in getting as many as I could the lack of really dark skies and the ambient temp (i't was warm).

300D, ISO 800. ED80 Prime focus F6.9. Guided with Toucam / 6" F5 using PHD to pulse guide.

When converting from the 32Bit file from DSS to 16Bit that CS2 will do stuff to, I altered the Gamma (lowered) and raised the exposure slightly. Then played around with curves and little and Levels a little. Then I examined the individual channels and noticed that the red chanel was quite coarse - so I blurred that chanel a little and recombined.

Drum roll....

(click to enlarge)

EDIT: Forgot to say that this is full size but cropped - I'm quite happy with the star shapes.

Ant