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I love it when a plan comes together - M13 & NGC7000/IC5070

samtheeagle

By samtheeagle
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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samtheeagle

samtheeagle

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So last night was the first clear night in about a month, and it wasn't a school night! Awesome :) So I started setting up nice and early, got everything ready and cleaned well before it was dark enough to start polar aligning. It was nice to be able to potter about with plenty of time to get prepared. Given the shocking cloudy spell recently endured I've been tinkering with all kinds of astro-related projects, and had a few things to try out...

First up was the new DC-DC power supply for my camera. I got this about a month ago after the last imaging session was ruined by a duff device causing my 350D to keep on powering down. But I am very pleased to say that this new one worked without a hitch, and has the added bonus of telling my the battery voltage during the night.

I also had my new home-brew guiding device, which I only just finished soldering together and coding the driver for yesterday. Rather amazingly it worked first time. The odds were improved somewhat by the fact that it was a reworking of my previous design, but now it's based around an Arduino board, to give me the potential for more features.

And on top of that I had a BigEye 50mm finder guider scope bolted to the top of the tube rings via a home made mounting bar. Initially I had issue with this scope as I couldn't get the DSI to come to focus with it, but a misunderstood question lead to a great accidental solution, thanks Deneb!

So basically I had a great night, and everything just bloomin worked! So I'm pretty happy, if tired today. It's funny how some nights everything just clicks, whereas others all the gremlins come out to get you... And along with all the technological wonders, the sky was beautifully clear, and the temperature warm. I was sat outside at 01:30 in t-shirt, the thermometer said 16.3 degrees. Nice.

Anyway, enough of the rambling, to the pictures! The main target for the night was M13, an old favourite of mine as it was the first DSO I imaged "properly". 13 x 360 seconds @ ISO800

post-16299-133877449469_thumb.jpg

And then late on when M13 was starting to close to going over the house I noticed that Cygnus had climbed up into the sky, and there be nebulas in that there region! And as my 350D has had it's IR filter removed it seemed rude not to... Only 5 x 360 seconds @ ISO800 on this one, and my aim leaves a bit to be desired :D I'm going to claim that I meant to get a bit of NGC7000 and IC5070. Honest.

post-16299-133877449476_thumb.jpg

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jnp

jnp

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Well done your new DIY solution is looking good. Especially on NGC7000.

Are you running without any IR filter or did you do the Baader IR swap? I face this dilema with my 1000d.

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samtheeagle

samtheeagle

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Toby, I used my C102 achro for these images. One day I'll get an apo and be rid of the bright blue stars and halos...

The 350D has had the IR filter removed completely, as you can see it just gobbles up Ha data :)

I shall try and find the time to post the details of the new autoguider widget, it's very similar to the last iteration, but with different underlying hardware now.

Thanks for the comments all.

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

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Well done your new DIY solution is looking good. Especially on NGC7000.

Are you running without any IR filter or did you do the Baader IR swap? I face this dilema with my 1000d.

According to the info on Astronomisers's site (And Andy Ellis knows his stuff) the 1000D would just need filter removal to get performance similar to a filter replacement

Astronomiser - Automated Astronomy and AstroImaging Solutions

Peter...

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