That sinking feeling...

[frugal]

... when you realise that you turned on Mirror Settle in the software, but you have not turned it on in the camera. So for the last hour and a half the software thinks it has been taking 5, 10 and then 15 minute exposures; but the shutter was only open for 2 seconds at a time...

I could not figure out why the histogram in SGPro was so narrow. I thought, my skies can't be that dark all of a sudden, so I increased the sub length from 5 min to 10 min to 15 min, to no avail. Then a memory slowly rose up from the depths of my mind: mirror settle needs to be turned on in software and hardware or it doesn't work... As I did not want to mess with the camera settings in the dark, I turned it off in software, and lo, 15 minutes later: M101 in all it's glory.

Of course, to cap it all, the guiding tonight has been the best I have ever acheived; shame it wasn't taking any images whilst it was doing it

[ollypenrice]

We've all done something similar at some time...

Olly

[frugal]

At least I managed to add some more data to the image from a while ago. Still not happy with it (noisy uneven background; stacking lines down the left hand edge; over processed the edges of the galaxy etc), but it is getting there. I think I am at least getting to know how to get the best out of the kit.

M101 by frugal10191, on Flickr