Synched on Betelgeuse because my Telrad is aligned well enough and I needed a bright star to focus on anyway. Used the PicGoto and as usual was right on target. A lot of Moon, very nearby; it was causing horrible shadows in my guide scope. Maybe I should have chosen a target a bit farther from the Moon. But I went ahead anyway because I haven't had many clear nights lately. I'm testing my new butyl rubber-tape-wrapped-connection USB cabling and it worked beautifully: no disconnects! (Admittedly, I need to test longer before I declare victory on this one). Imaged up to the meridian with relatively poor guiding performance, did a meridian flip and readjusted my counterweights, then continued. Used the Astrotortilla synch this time because my Telrad was frosted over and was at an awkward angle; it worked fine after initially getting a bad goto because I forgot to uncheck "inverted" on the PicGoto software after doing the flip. Guiding after the flip was much better. Started getting clouds immediately after flipping, but as I was heading to bed it looked like they were dissipating. Did a set of sky tee shirt flats in the morning. You can see the cone in these images but not much other detail in the nebulosity until processing brought a bit more out. I may want to try this again when the Moon is not so near just so I can compare how much it affects Hα. Not enough data; still pretty noisy.

Date: 31 Jan 2015

Subject: NGC 2264, Christmas Tree Cluster/Cone Nebula

Scope: AT8IN + Antares 0.5x telereducer

Filter: Baader 7 nm Hα

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.4.1 (Win 7 ASCOM)

Camera: DSI IIc no cooling (about 0 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.2, no dither

Exposure: 24x600 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, 33 flats, extract R, histogram match, square, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.289 Crop; Develop 70.43%; HDRptimize; Life:Less=More; Track 4.3 pix; Magic 1 pix. Photoshop CC 2014 + Carboni Astronomy Tools Deep space noise reduction; layer masked space noise reduction; Hα false color black space; Astroframe; assemble into animated GIF.