Are my ongoing “light infringement” problems associated with moonlight? I’ve explored everything else. So following up on my Dec 20th log, I’m out on a pristine dark transparent calm moonless night. Maybe Bortle 4.5? And the holiday lights are gone so the horizon’s dark every direction.
No good wide-field targets so the camera’s moved from the refractor to the SCT. Camera refocused and new illuminated panel flat taken. Even with dark neighborhood the lower shutter is installed and the observatory is completely darkened – even shutting the monitor off.
I’ve worked galaxy IC 342 many times and have never been satisfied with the result as there are some very dim areas I’ve been unable to capture.
- IC 342 240102 try 88 s.jpg (942.47 KiB) Viewed 26599 times
2 Jan 2024 18:18 – 22:22 hrs.
82 X 3 min, unbinned, -15°C cooling, 200 gain, 2 Hz guide rate
14” Meade LX200 GPS @ f/6.3 with unfiltered ASI2600MC-P camera
OK. This is my best IC 342 yet. Took a lot of tricky processing and that may be one of the reasons. But the field was uniformly dark!!! And that makes all the difference in the world when stretching an image.
Conclusions & lessons learned:
Obviously moonlight has been the problem. And maybe local lighting too. This is going to limit my imaging but lower the frustration level.
It was below freezing all-session and once the scope was setup and imaging initiated everything was monitored from the house using Windows Remote. Just not happy with that level of cold anymore.
hgp 1/3/24
