M67 Open Cluster (27/03/20)

[rob_r]

Hi. Seems a while since I was last out with the scope last week and we had 3 clear nights in a row which is practically unheard of. All the data for this was gathered on Friday night after failing to achieve adequate focus on this target the night before. The night before that, I went galaxy hunting but failed to locate any. At least, I got some time with my new EQ5 mount but was still finding star trailing a problem above 20 second exposure, poor polar alignment by the user perhaps. It was auto tracked, is that the right term? There was no guide scope involved but that is on the shopping list for later in the year. Since Orion is now off to the Southwest, it has disappeared from view as houses block the view so I tried for M67 in Cancer which was bright enough to overcome the sky quality and does not appear to be all that often imaged. 

Scope: Skywatcher Mak 127mm (focal length 1500mm, f12)
Camera: Canon 600D unmodded
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5 GoTo
Lights: 97 frames, 65 x 5 seconds at ISO3200 plus 32 x 15 seconds at ISO3200
Darks: 27 frames, 17 x 5 seconds at ISO3200 plus 10 x 15 seconds at ISO3200
Bortle: 6

Stacked and processed in Siril v0.9 (Mac OS X), removed green noise and auto stretched levels with further curve and level adjustments in Photoshop.

Thanks for looking.

Edited March 30, 2020 by rob_r
Added stacking and processing details

[celestron8g8]

Nice capture !