NGC1579 - Northern Trifid Nebula

[Budgie1]

Finally had a clear few hours this evening after a very clear day. This gave me a chance to see what difference I'd made to my scope & mount.

The SW Evostar 100ED Pro had the focuser tuned (taken apart, cleaned, the flat on the focuser tube ground flat, assembled and adjusted). The SW EQ5 mount had the same treatment over the weekend with a full strip, clean, new bearings, re-grease and assembled again.

The focuser performed very well, it use to change focus as I tightened the locking screw because of slack. Tonight is took five adjustment to get focus!

The jury is still out on the mount. It runs nicely and sounds good but guiding wasn't that great. Because the cloud came in just after 21:30 with gaps, I stopped imaging and found enough of a gap to run the PHD2 calibration a couple of times and the Guide Assistant. I then ran the guiding for about 15 minutes and it got down to 0.48 RMS error but it needs a longer run to see if it's better or not.

Anyway, my target for tonight was the Northern Trifid Nebula (NGC1579) and this is my first go at this target. I only managed an 1:20 on the target before the cloud came, so this is still very much a work in progress. It's still quite noisy as a result of the low integration time but it's got the makings of something better.

This is a quick process in PixInsight and is 17 x 300s with darks, flats & dark flats taken with a ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled to -10°C at gain of 120.

With a few more hours of spent on it there should bring out the dark areas better.

C&C's welcomed.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Budgie1