M74, "The Phantom," 15 Nov 2012 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Pisces (Psc) · Contains: M 74 · NGC 628

M74, "The Phantom," 15 Nov 2012

M74 was easy to find tonight by lining up the Telrad with visible stars in Aries and Pisces. It was visible in my cameras with exposures of about 5 s or perhaps less. There are intermittent clouds tonight and gusty wind playing havoc with this image. I did go to 480 s subframes, significantly longer than I usually use. Bottom line: not enough time on target, too many clouds.

Date: 15 Nov 2012

Subject: M74, “The Phantom”

Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific coma corrector spaced properly

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: Orion ST80 + DSI Ic + PHD 1.13.7

Camera: DSI IIc (1.8 A, 7.0 V T = 0 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.2, no dither

Exposure: 8 x 480 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map & flats, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack

Processing: Neb 3 crop and autocolor balance. StarTools 1.3 Wipe, Develop, Sharpen, Deconvolute, Track, Denoise, Magic, Life. CS6 star color enhance, color blotch, deep space, space noise reduction, duplicate layers, levels in one, layer mask Gaussian blue combine.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6663773
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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