An Owl and his Surfboard

[Smiller]

Got another clear night, second one in a week.  Decided to spend it on the Owl Nebula and I tried to frame it to sweep up that Surfboard Galaxy too.

 

About 3 hours of 4 second exposures using my Goto 12" Dobsonian (Orion XT12G) and the ASi2400MC camera.  Bortle 6/7 skies.  Normally I try for 8 second exposures but tracking wasn’t so good so I just cut it back knowing stacking would take longer.  No filters.

 

 

I had trouble rescuing most of the data from doing a dumb thing:  I had my radiating heater hanging on a ladder to keep dew and frost away, and the scope eventually slewed enough for the heater to shine into the front of the scope dew shield creating a big orange circle in the middle of about 2/3rds of the lights.  Careful background removal was needed to resuscitate the data.

 

Cheers,

 

Steven