Imaging M78 proved to be much more challenging than I than anticipated. Winter in New England always makes it difficult, however, there were some additional issues. M78 is a reflection nebula in the constellation of Orion some 1600 light years from us. This object (magnitude 8.3) is not visible with the naked eye and certainly not under the light polluted sky of southern Connecticut. Even with my telescope, the Orion ED 80, I could not see it which made it especially difficult. It did not become visible until I set the time exposure to 30 seconds using a light pollution filter (Astronomik CLS).

M78 - Diffuse Nebula

Difficulties:

Day1 - I hoped to get 2.5 hrs, manged to get 1.25 hrs!

1) Could not find nebula, goto was not dead on. Tried to locate for 15 minutes and actually gave up.

2) Tried to locate other objects like the Horsehead nebula when I realized the goto was not tracking well and the stars were streaking a bit.

3) Realigned the mount and went back to M78. I was about to give up again as I saw nothing with the finderscope but took a 30 s exposure anyway. At first I did not see anything but kept looking and saw a faint whit spot in the center. I was dead on. YAY!

4) Tried to use PHD2 for autoguiding but once again it gave me an error. Something about not finding the declination...Thank goodness for PHD the original.

Day2 - I hoped to get 1.5 hr, managed to get 30 min of usable images!

1) Was able to locate the nebula, it was a little breezy and the stars were streaking too much.

2) Got everything re-aligned, perfect tracking tripped over the power cord and did not think anything was wrong as it appeared to be plugged in. Connected the autoguider and noticed stars moving through the view. I was scared as I thought my mount was broke. The problem was the cigarette connection came loose when I tripped over it.

3) Re-aligned again (I'm getting good at this)and was dead on. FINALLY!

The images do show the central core well but not the entire complex seen on other images. You can there is a slight haze around the image but I could bring it out with anymore processing. The long and short of it is, I need more data for a better image, however, I am happy with what I got and this will have to do for now.