Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pisces (Psc)  ·  Contains:  M 74  ·  NGC 628
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M74, "Phantom" Galaxy, OSC, 6 Oct 2015, David Dearden
M74, "Phantom" Galaxy, OSC, 6 Oct 2015
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M74, "Phantom" Galaxy, OSC, 6 Oct 2015

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Description

A lot of “firsts” in this image. It was first light for a self-centering 2”-1.25” reducing adapter for my DSI IIc camera, replacing a single-screw compression ring adapter that had a tendency to push the focal plane of the camera out of orthogonality. I also removed the Peltier cooler/heat sink/fan assembly from the camera because the Peltier is burned out and I haven’t used it all summer. This was also my first imaging run using Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) with VMWare Fusion 8.0.1; I had no issues with the software. Despite a less-than-perfect forecast (partly cloudy), conditions were quite good all night: clear, cool, and no wind. Polar alignment, according to the PhD 2 Guiding Assistant, was much better than usual. My only issues were an ongoing battle to try to improve RA guiding performance, which was poor and resulted in football-shaped stars with these 10’ subframes (mostly fixed in post processing), and considerable differential flexure over the course of the session. Still, I think this is considerably better than last year’s effort

Date: 6 Oct 2015

Subject: M74, “Phantom” Galaxy

Scope: AT8IN

Filter: Baader Fringe Killer

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

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.5.0.1 (Win 7 ASCOM)

Camera: DSI IIc, no chiller CCD 15 °C

Acquisition: Nebulosity 4.0.3, no dither

Exposure: 38x600 s

Stacking: Neb 4, bad pixel map, bias included, 33 flats, match histograms, deBayer & square, trans+rot align, DSS 2x drizzle 1.75 average κ-σ stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.4.305 Crop; Wipe 75%; Develop 84.02%; HDR optimize; Color: scientific, 300%; Deconvolute 6.0 pix; Track 6.9 pix, Smoothness 90%; Repair: Redistribute, core avg.; Magic: shrink 3 pixels. CS6 Astronomy Tools levels & curves; deep space noise reduction; layer masked space noise reduction; debloat stars with liquify/pucker filter; Astroframe.

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M74, "Phantom" Galaxy, OSC, 6 Oct 2015, David Dearden