Rosette... in desperation

[AKB]

I was absolutely desperate to get out a few nights ago (March 25th): clear, not windy, not too cold, new moon.  Can't remember the last time it's been like that.  I haven't been in the observatory for a while so just went with what I had set up.

• Esprit 120ED Pro
• ASI294MC OSC, with 'quad band' filter

Hadn't planned anything, but was facing west when I aligned on a star, so just went for the Rosette nebula.  Perhaps a bit late in the season for that, and I had been meaning to switch the rig over to galaxy imaging mode, but hadn't.  So I went for something big and bright.  Too big, as it turns out for the FOV!

Started around 8:00pm and ran until 10:30pm.  31 x 5 minute frames.  Paused a couple of times to refocus.  This is probably the longest total imaging time on one target I've ever done.  I've had a couple of stabs at processing, but really the object of the exercise was to get out there, use the gear, and have fun.  Amazingly, everything worked immensely smoothly, although guiding was only around 1 arcsec RMS.

Here it is.  A more RGB-like filter would have been better, so this is, essentially, a bi-colour image.  Comments welcomed.

Thanks,  Tony.

 

[steppenwolf]

1 minute ago, AKB said:

although guiding was only around 1 arcsec RMS.

I have been struggling with good guiding recently and don't fully understand why but I suspect that it is tied to appalling seeing as my FWHM focus figures haven't been great either ☹️ 

Your image is lovely, well worth the effort!

[MarkAR]

Lovely image showing some nice dark detail between 3 and 6 o'clock.