Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cepheus (Cep)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7380
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Wizard Nebula, Kyle Goodwin
Wizard Nebula
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Wizard Nebula

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Wizard Nebula, Kyle Goodwin
Wizard Nebula
Powered byPixInsight

Wizard Nebula

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

I captured this in one night just past the full moon from my backyard with my OSC portable/travel setup and a dual narrowband filter.  I wanted to see how it would compare with my ~7 years ago image in mono/narrowband.  Even using OSC the data from these new Sony CMOS sensors is marvelously clean and a joy to work with.  I decided to go for a very different coloring approach in this image just for whimsy.  The processing, like my other recent images, is fairly minimal overall.  This was my first image taken with NINA which was extremely easy to work with via the new Advanced Sequencer.  It is very similar to Voyager Drag Script, but it's structured around natural loops and triggers rather than the fully imperative style Drag Script uses.  I found configuring the meridian flip to be significantly easier in NINA since it was trivial to set a 3 minute safety pause before the meridian to avoid a pier crash (my portable setup will hit the pier at 1-5 minutes past the meridian in certain locations), wait until after the meridian for 3 more minutes, and then execute the flip.  Setting up the autofocus was very easy, but slightly more difficult than Voyager.  It takes a bit longer to run a successful autofocus using the full frame HFR method in NINA compared to the single star V-curve method I was using in Voyager, but not extremely so, and no slew away from the target or calibration of suitable star magnitudes is required.  Overall it was at least as accurate and with a little tuning (my initial parameters were very conservative to ensure a good curve) I think it will be equally quick on my next try.  NINA was very good at recovering from passing clouds which caused intermittent guiding loss between 2 and 3:30 in the morning.  It successfully continued imaging until the astronomical dawn cutoff I had set and then took my flats.  This can definitely be done using Drag Script in Voyager, but it requires a lot more planning whereas NINA's loops/trigger approach is very easy to set up exactly the way you want.  I will do one more single target/single night image tonight and then I will try out the multi-target planning features in NINA to see if I can integrate 3-4 different targets a few hours each night for several nights in a row for times when that is the optimal approach.

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Wizard Nebula, Kyle Goodwin

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Cloudy Nights