Thor's Helmet was difficult for me to find. There were no bright stars nearby to line up on and the Astroplanner charts weren't much help either. Eventually I found a 3-star asterism that helped a little. I needed about 30 s in the finder camera to get a hint of the nebula, so this was really challenging. I got everything lined up and started the PHD calibration, but just as that was about to finish I must have jiggled the USB cable and lost the connection. To make matters worse, the mount was still getting a "move south" command, so it ran away and I had to go through the whole finding process again. But at any rate, now I seem to be getting some usable subframes. CCD is starting at 0.0 °C. Sky conditions smoggy but otherwise clear. Overall, this has to be one of the most difficult objects I've tried to image, but it is beautiful so worth trying!
Date: 6 Feb 2013
Subject: NGC 2359, Thor’s Helmet
Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific Coma Corrector (but I was not careful about the spacing)
Filter: None
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.0
Camera: DSI IIc (no chiller, T = 0 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.2, no dither
Exposure: 30x300 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3 Develop, HDR
ptimize, Sharp, Deconvolute, Track, Repair:Warp, Magic:Shrink, Life:Moderate. CS6 Astronomy Tools increase star color, less crunch more fuzzy, AstroFrame.
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