Crusty beginnings of something great: M33 - 31/07-01/08/2024
Hello there!
After waiting for a solid amount of time for my OnStep kit to arrive, it has finally happened!
I was however, missing a cable at first.. but I've messages TerransIndustry for the pinout I needed and put together a cable - the mount was moving!
Funny enough, this was while I was on a trip with friends, and we were actually at a location that was much better in terms of light pollution than my usual spot! (even though my usual bortle 4-5 spot ain't that bad :p)
Now, we had essentially no internet connection there.. this meant I had to learn how to use guiding and stuff by random clicking and watching a few random youtube tutorials I downloaded before going.. and I did! Well, kind of..
I did get the guiding part to work, and surprisingly I was able to pull 4 minute long subs with my Canon 1300D and 1200mm focal lenght scope without a problem! However, I just could not get GOTO to work..
I later found out that this was due to not starting the mount in home position.. for some reason none of the tutorials I've downloaded mentioned this at all.. But well, I've been manually targetting stuff this entire time! So while it was annoying, especially without platesolving, I did manage to target M33 at least, and for 2 nights! I did not yet know how important it is to get a lot of exposure time though unfortunately, and I also had dew collecting on my secondary (which I didn't even know about at the time!), so I only got about an hour of exposure, and the data turned out rather crusty...
I processed it just today in PixInsight, utilizing BlurXterminator and DeepSNR. Didn't spend much time on it though, bad data in - bad image out, a lesson I've learned since then haha! Honestly though, it could be worse!
Here is the final image:
Comments
Post a Comment