So I’m trying out a new setup on NGC6960. I was going to try my Sigma 200mm lens with my Canon 1300D with my reborn Skywatcher EQ3-2 Pro. This would be nice and light for the mount (which is a bit wimpy these days) but I’ve plumped for using my ES ED80APO with the Canon 1300D on my HEQ5. This has given a nice field of view (I can get about half of NGC6960 in one frame) and I’m planning to try and do a two frame mosaic.
It was a nice clear night last night, so virtually everything went wrong.
First my Wi-Fi died in the garden so I couldn’t remote desktop into the control machine. I eventually fixed this by running a 30 M Ethernet cable from the house to the control PC.
Secondly I could only just bring the rig to focus with the tube at full extension (tonight I will add another extender).
Thirdly, this is the first time out new dog has seen me being weird in the garden at night before so I kept constantly tripping over him.
As an upshot of this I didn’t start imaging until about 12-30am 🙁 so I got an hour of 5 minute frames then moved onto darks.
I’ll continue tonight and tomorrow but this is what I got last night when stacked
I stacked this in DSS and stretched it using GIMP. I really need to get a flattener but I just used GIMPs Lens Distortion filter to get rid of the stretching at the corners here.