M74 LRGB - 24/10/08

[Whippy]

Another cracking night conditions-wise, another furstrating night imaging-wise . After ensuring the mount was properly balanced, taking abit more time over my polar alignment, I'm still having tracking errors. I'm hoping doing my polar alignment via WCS or something will do the trick, otherwise it would appear my mount is a 'friday afternoon' effort. I actually did about 2 and a quarter hours' worth of luminence but I've had to discard about an hours' worth as oval stars just don't look good. And to top it off, more blotches because of unclean surfaces. Woo. I'm not actually unhappy, more disappointed as everything was behaving itself until and during Kelling, but since I've had nothing but aggro.

Anyhoo, M74. Total exposure time 2 hrs 58 mins, 1 hr 19 mins luminence (8x5 mins, 1x7 mins, 2x6 mins and 2x10 mins), 39 mins for Blue (13x3 mins) and 30 each for Red and Green (10x3 mins). Atik 16HR, Baader IR & RGB and IDAS filters, WO ZS110 doing the imaging. ZS66, QHY5 and PHD doing the 'guiding'. EQ6 pretending to track. Stacked in DSS and processed photoshop.

(click to enlarge)

Tony..

[Psychobilly]

Nice image despite the frustratiuon Tony...

My frustrations were darting clouds on a firstlight night ...

Billy...

[mik]

Well at least you went out and captured some data nice image

Mick

[barkis]

Mucho Grande. And it's getting towards Catherine Wheel night, so it fits the occasion well.

Ron.

[LostNSpace]

Still a great image Tony considering you ended up scrapping over an hours worth of data

Mark

[steppenwolf]

Nice, despite the frustrations

[Whippy]

Thanks everyone .

Tony..