Sergei Golyshev (AFK during workdays)
M3 / NGC 5272, globular cluster: Back to the beginning
Nearly full Moon and summer twilight aren't the indulgence for laziness :)
My recent astrophotography sessions all are the exercises in frustration since I'm trying to get at least 60 seconds of tracking from my 25 kg of cold steel (NEQ6 Pro :) and keep bumping into different problems like cone error, misplaced bubble level and so on. When I feel frustrated enough I just press M button and "go-to" to any suitable Messier object. At least I would have an image :) Anyway, I have enough time to listen to the nightingales...
Acquisition time (start of a session): JD2456795.354652 (18.05.2014, around 00:30:42 MSK)
Equipment:
Canon EOS 60D (unmodded) running Magic Lantern firmware override on Celestron OMNI XLT 150 mm Newtonian riding on Skywatcher NEQ-6 Pro mount.
Aperture 150 mm
Focal length 750 mm
Tv = 30 seconds
Av = f/5
ISO 1600
Exposures: 73 (plus 54 dark frames (oh, yes!) plus respective master offset and master flatfield images from the library).
Processing: Images were converted into .DNG and fed to DSS. "Superpixel" color generation mode was used, so the final image is two times smaller than the original subs. Final touches were "creatively" done in Photoshop. Resulting image was cropped to remove the coma-affected regions.
M3 / NGC 5272, globular cluster: Back to the beginning
Nearly full Moon and summer twilight aren't the indulgence for laziness :)
My recent astrophotography sessions all are the exercises in frustration since I'm trying to get at least 60 seconds of tracking from my 25 kg of cold steel (NEQ6 Pro :) and keep bumping into different problems like cone error, misplaced bubble level and so on. When I feel frustrated enough I just press M button and "go-to" to any suitable Messier object. At least I would have an image :) Anyway, I have enough time to listen to the nightingales...
Acquisition time (start of a session): JD2456795.354652 (18.05.2014, around 00:30:42 MSK)
Equipment:
Canon EOS 60D (unmodded) running Magic Lantern firmware override on Celestron OMNI XLT 150 mm Newtonian riding on Skywatcher NEQ-6 Pro mount.
Aperture 150 mm
Focal length 750 mm
Tv = 30 seconds
Av = f/5
ISO 1600
Exposures: 73 (plus 54 dark frames (oh, yes!) plus respective master offset and master flatfield images from the library).
Processing: Images were converted into .DNG and fed to DSS. "Superpixel" color generation mode was used, so the final image is two times smaller than the original subs. Final touches were "creatively" done in Photoshop. Resulting image was cropped to remove the coma-affected regions.