Finally a good night to revisit one of my favorite targets, the Sculptor Galaxy. It is pretty low in my southern sky, but a beautiful, bright object as galaxies go. Conditions were better than average with just a slight bit of wind. Got a late start because I did the Chemistry Magic show earlier in the evening, but it wouldn't have made a lot of difference because NGC 253 doesn't rise over the mountain until around my starting time anyway. Synched from Diphda (β Cet) and the PicGoto was right on. With as much Dec backlash as my mount has, it is amazing to me how well the PicGoto always seems to do. I'm using a developer build of PHD2 (2.3.1k, I believe) and it seems to be unstable. More than once I got calibrated, started guiding, stopped to reframe the image, then had PHD2 crash when I tried to start looping again. I think I'm going to go back to the last release build and see if these problems are due to the build or to all the other software changes I've made. This image needs some flats, which I can probably get tonight.
Date: 22 Oct 2014
Subject: NGC 253, Sculptor Galaxy
Scope: AT8IN
Filter: Baader Fringe Killer
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.3.1k (Win 7 ASCOM)
Camera: DSI IIc chiller at 2.50 A, 5-7 °C
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.1, no dither
Exposure: 45x300 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, no flats, normalize, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.289 Crop; Wipe:Color & brightness 78%; Develop 79.3%; HDR
ptimize; Deconvolute auto mask 3.0 pix; Color:Scientific, 300%; Track Grain size 3.0 pix; Magic:Shrink 1 pix (twice). Photoshop CC 2014 + Carboni Astronomy Tools Increase star color; Levels (darken) with a layer mask to take out some dust bunnies; Astro Frame.
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