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Messier 45 Pleiades reflection nebula/open cluster

Another part of Saturday night's session - I really wanted to catch C/2016 R2 but couldn't find it at first so took a few subs of M45 before trying again. This is initially 8 x 5 min sub-exposures but I was able to find 5 x 5 minute subs from a session in Nov 2014 from the same camera and scope and add them in.

 

The old subs had a diffraction spike from a hair from a cleaning brush stuck on the focal reducer! - Ive left them in.

 

 

I hadnt got my guiding sorted at the start of the evening and lost 2 subs to DEC drive backlash - got that sorted by hitting the "compensate" button in PHD2 and only guiding Southwards as DEC tended to push Northwards.

 

480/80mm refractor with Canon 60Da @ ISO 800.

IPAS LPS filter

Ioptron ZEQ25GT

 

QHY Polemaster alignment.

Polar alignment error measured by PHD2 - 0.8 arcmins

RA drift -3.8 arcsec/min

Dec drift +0.74 arcsec/min

 

Guiding from PHD2 (ZWO 290MM/Orion Mini Guider).

RA RMS error 2.2 arcsec, peak -18.7 arcsec

Dec RMS error 1.1 arcsec, peak 6.9 arcsec

 

PixInsight 1.8 post processing.

 

30 dark frames

30 bias frames

57 flat frames (LED panel @ 1/20 sec).

 

Image field of view: 1.75 deg x 1.45 deg

Image centred on: RA: 3h 47m 07.82s, Dec: +24deg 04m 59.7s

Image scale: 1.75 arcsec/pixel.

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Uploaded on January 8, 2018
Taken on January 15, 2018