M2 - in the wide

[happy-kat]

M2 - wide field

Lovely clear night for being outside, living in a bowl at the bottom of rising land all around often presents mist, and the 10th was no exception could see stars but they didn't pop out.

1100d with a old lens from the 80s Helios 135mm, mixture of f8 and f4 as I had forgotten on first setup to check the aperture on the lens. Heavy crop as M2 was in the light dome and close to street light to the South. Lights 21x 30 seconds ISO 1600. I couldn't use the flats I had as there was a new dust bunny and as I did not take a fresh set there wasn't any gain in using the ones in the library I have, there would have been dark flat frames too only I had miss remembered and didn't have any in my calibration library. The mount was a Virtuoso being powered by a Celstron liFePo4 battery and the camera was mounted on a dove bar and I used a long flocked tube to shield the lens. To control the camera I use DSLR Controller on a 7 inch android tablet as it makes things a lot easier. All was sat on a small wooden unit by the front door.

Processed in DSS and StarTools. I have checked in PaintShopPro and the black point isn't clipped but ooh so very close so I might try to process it again. I combined two different processes using layers in StarTools and a mask so as to preserve the globular cluster which had been lost on using Wipe for the background.

[Ruud]

It's a cute little cluster.