At last a clear evening good enough to attempt some imaging after a long wait through the Christmas period and some extreme weather. The festive illuminations had disappeared meanwhile so conditions were more agreeable for photography again before the moon gets too bright. Last year I had noted these small patches of emission nebulae high in Orion near the border of Gemini so thought they would make a suitable target for the Newtonian. Though the group seems to be generally identified as IC 2162 it contains Sh2-254, 255, 257 & 258. Despite the guiding being a bit troublesome and transparency not perfect it was pleasing to be able to produce an image once more after the lengthy downtime. Details: 10" f4.3 Newt. 14x 8 minute exposures @ iso1600 with CLS in DSS, CS2 & XAT.9.1.11
IC 2162
At last a clear evening good enough to attempt some imaging after a long wait through the Christmas period and some extreme weather. The festive illuminations had disappeared meanwhile so conditions were more agreeable for photography again before the moon gets too bright. Last year I had noted these small patches of emission nebulae high in Orion near the border of Gemini so thought they would make a suitable target for the Newtonian. Though the group seems to be generally identified as IC 2162 it contains Sh2-254, 255, 257 & 258. Despite the guiding being a bit troublesome and transparency not perfect it was pleasing to be able to produce an image once more after the lengthy downtime. Details: 10" f4.3 Newt. 14x 8 minute exposures @ iso1600 with CLS in DSS, CS2 & XAT.
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3 comments:
Hi Pete,
Out of interest, were your guiding problems the result of the breezy weather last night? I started having guiding problems last night too but only after about 11pm? I hadn't realised how windy it was at first but soon noticed when I went outside to work out what was going wrong. It was also the first time my guidescope has fogged up so it wasn't one of my best evenings.
Simon
Hi Simon,
I think it was probably more down to unsteady seeing with me. Though sometimes I wonder if it might be due to running the calibration on too dim a star. I have quite a long dew cap on my guidescope as dewing has been quite severe in the past. I'll see how it performs tonight.
Pete
I may have to build myself a longer dewcap as last night my only solution was to use a hairdryer to blow warm air across the lens. I was quite surprised the lens didn't seem to dew up again afterwards though.
Good luck this evening. Unfortunately I have to get up early tomorrow evening so the thought of a long setup/teardown has got the better of me.
Simon
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