I planned these, my first astrophotography vacations, with very little anticipation and quite challenging constraints... such as arriving during a full moon with poor weather forecast ahead and only for 5 nights.
Tonight's forecast was promising and I had almost two hours of darkness before moon rise. I was able to get back to the cabin with enough time to do a good polar alignment and take few subs on the Large Magellanic Cloud while waiting for the night to be fully dark and my chosen subject to rise behind the mountains. I knew that I wouldn't have any other chance soon to get "a shot" at Orion's belt from a Bortle 3 sky with a nice cabin to wait for the acquisition to finish, without freezing or fearing to be robbed, as I usually do when shooting from the side of the road. That was it.
Shot details:
. Sony a6100 @ ISO 3200
. Rokinon 135mm f/2 wide open (I didn't have time to shoot for 3-4 hours at f/2.8)
. Unguided Star Adventurer
. 20 darks and bias, 20 flats and dark flats from my archive
I'm truly enjoying my almost 100% freeware software bundle, being Photoshop 2024 the only piece of paid software I use. I find DSS, GraXpert AI, Siril and StarNet (ran from Siril) to be amazing pieces of software and great learning tools. I'll eventually "graduate" to PI, one step at a time...
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Last revision edit (4/10/2024):
I'm on my second day of my trial licenses for PixInsinght, BlurXterminator, NoiseXterminator and StarXterminator. I'm reprocessing all my data, I can't believe the difference these tools can make, it's like doubling the resolution and depth of my subs. I'm blown away.
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