M64, Black Eye Galaxy, 1 Jun 2013 (David Dearden)

M64, Black Eye Galaxy, 1 Jun 2013

It took a while to find M64 tonight, mainly because it was awkward to get my eye up to the Telrad where this was in the sky (post-meridian, so the Telrad was hanging underneath the scope). Eventually I recognized asterisms in the guider and found the target, which is easily visible at 2 s in the imager. Even with these short exposures, the "black eye" is easily visible. Had a lot of problems with guiding tonight, mostly in RA. I think the balance was just not right tonight. I tried to improve it mid-session and just made things worse. I'll look at it in the morning (it was WAY off, too heavy to the west). I spent some time messing with the chiller to try to optimize the cooling. I found current limiting seemed to produce the best results, and settled on 2.25 A as a good compromise. So I’m not at all happy with this image, but I was reminded again about the great importance of balance when using this rig. With the mount as overloaded as it is, you just can’t be too far off.

Date: 1 Jun 2013

Subject: M64, Black Eye Galaxy

Scope: AT8IN + HPS Coma Corrector

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.2

Camera: DSI IIc (chiller at ~2.25 A, T = 8 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.6, no dither

Exposure: 20x300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.25 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3 Crop; Wipe:Color & Brightness; Develop 91.94%; Contrast; HDR:Reveal; Sharpen; Deconvolute: 2.8 pix; Track; Color:Bottom 2.0, Top Full, Sat 600%; Repair:Redistribute Core Avg.; Magic:Shrink 1; Magic:Tighten 1; Life:Moderate. CS6+Astronomy Tools increase star color; deep space noise reduction; space noise reduction; diffraction spikes medium, adjust hue/sat in spikes, AstroFrame.

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