M42 Orion Nebula
It’s been far too long after my last post, I have been using my equipment when the weather allows, however, been very bad ay posting here, something I will improve upon.
After many months of struggling to get my equipment to work remotely, I think the system is now working reliably, unfortunately, the Moon was hanging nearby for my test subject on 26/02/21.
On this night the mount was working fairly well, although guiding was still causing some issues. These issues I think are to do with backlash, to hopefully overcome this I have modified the mount with a belt driven kit (http://www.rowanastronomy.com/productsa1.htm#heq5beltkit). The instructions are good and it’s easy to fit, plenty of videos on YouTube also. The mount is really quiet when tested during the day and hopefully this week I will get some clear skies to test it properly.
I'm not 100% with this image of M42 yet, still getting used to Astropixel Processor and post-production with my own images but I thought I would post anyway. Images: 50 x 12 sec Red 50 x 12 sec Green 50 x 12 sec Blue Total integration time: 30 minutes
Calibration files 100 darks 100 bias 100 flats Stacked in AstroPixelProcessor Processing in AstroPixelProcessor
Equipment: Telescope: Skywatcher 120ED Pro Focal reducer: Skywatcher 0.85x reducer/field flattener Mount: Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro Camera: Atik 314L+ Mono cooled to Temp degrees Focuser: PrimaLuceLab ESATTO2 Guidescope: PrimaLuceLab 60mm Guide camera: ZWO 120mm mono Controller: PrimaLuceLab Eagle 2 Sequencing software: N.I.N.A.
