Caught 31 galaxies in 2 hours last night

[gorann]

Finally, half a clear night and I had my second chance to learn to master the Mesu mount. Put the Esprit 150 on it with the ASI 071MC at the camera end (gain 200, offset 30, -15°C). After a bit of fighting with the software running the mount (I thought I remembered how to do it but had finally to read the manual again), I started imaging at 21.30. At midnight clouds moved in so I only got 2.4 hours of data (29 x 5 min). Still, I caught a lot of galaxies, the three larger ones being NGC 4725, 4712 and 4747.

Seeing was probably relatively poor since I was far from the Mesu guiding curves people post. Mine was around 1.0" RMS.

Stacked and annotated in PI, processed in PS.

It may be clear on Monday night and my plan right now is to collect lum using the Esprit 150 with a 0.79x TS reducer (so f/5.5) and my ASI 1600MM. Will give a very similar FOV and pixel scale.

Comments and suggestions wecome of course!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ollypenrice]

I love this one armed galaxy and hope you get more data on it. Looks good so far.

Olly

[Allinthehead]

That's a great start. Congratulations on your new toy. I'm sure you'll have it mastered in no time.

[gorann]

Thanks Olly!

Yes this galaxy is quite a looker and suddenly tomorrow night looks promising....

[gorann]

33 minutes ago, Allinthehead said:

That's a great start. Congratulations on your new toy. I'm sure you'll have it mastered in no time.

Thanks a lot Richard. I hope you are right!

[Seanelly]

What an interesting image. Well done!

[gorann]

10 hours ago, Seanelly said:

What an interesting image. Well done!

Thanks a lot, much appreciated!

[Thommy]

Nice catch! The Mesu should do better than 1" RMS so if you don't guide you'll probably be better off. 

[gorann]

2 hours ago, Thommy said:

Nice catch! The Mesu should do better than 1" RMS so if you don't guide you'll probably be better off. 

Thanks! A good idea. Could I still let PHD2 show me the guide curve even if it does not guide so I know I am not completely messing up going undguided? How do I best do that?

[x6gas]

14 hours ago, gorann said:

Thanks! A good idea. Could I still let PHD2 show me the guide curve even if it does not guide so I know I am not completely messing up going undguided? How do I best do that?

Probably the most useful way is to turn on guiding assistant which turns off guide commands but you can also effectively do it by, for example, setting aggressiveness to zero or a very high minimum motion.

[gorann]

6 hours ago, x6gas said:

Probably the most useful way is to turn on guiding assistant which turns off guide commands but you can also effectively do it by, for example, setting aggressiveness to zero or a very high minimum motion.

Thanks - will try! (next time it clears up)

[Thommy]

You can disable guide outputs in phd guide. As far as I remember it's in the menu and not in the brain, but I might be wrong. Should be fairly easy to find though. With this option ticked you can still follow the guide curves.

/Thommy

[gorann]

1 hour ago, Thommy said:

You can disable guide outputs in phd guide. As far as I remember it's in the menu and not in the brain, but I might be wrong. Should be fairly easy to find though. With this option ticked you can still follow the guide curves.

/Thommy

Will check next time it clears. Thanks Thommy!

Last night it did clear and I got 4.5 hours of luminance with ASI1600MM (3 min and 5 min subs with IDAS filter, gain 200, offset 30, -20°C) on the Esprit 150 with a TS 0.79x 2" reducer (to match the FOV of the larger chip on the ASI071MC that I used for the RGB image). So now totally 6.5 hours, so I am getting there. It improved the galaxies significantly in my humble oppinion:

[Laurin Dave]

Certainly did..  significant improvement in resolution in the galaxies

Dave