Oh boy, that was a tough one. On the same night I captured the first light of the Astrograph, I decided to test something: let's tell my ASIAIR to do a full Plan using multiple filters, the EAF and on an entirely different target while I'm sleeping. I only made sure the camera orientation was good enough, but by the time the first light frame was captured it was past 2:30AM.
Carina Nebula - First Light of Astrograph 203mmI was really pleased with the test, even more so because the NGC6188 is my favorite target in the nightsky, period. But maybe, for this same reason, it deserves some more attention. I don't think that 3 hours of SHO data were enough to reveal the level of details that I wanted from it. Processing was painful, especially because playing around with color and masks eventually led to a lot of noise, and there's only so much that NoiseXTerminator can do for you without removing sharpness from your image.
I'll consider this test a success anyway, because now I know I actually can sleep while my gear does the job. I'll definitely use these frames on another image of the Dragons, perhaps one with more integration time and longer exposures.
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