They say every image tells a story. This one does.
Not a long time ago, in a galaxy not far, far away ... uhm 🙄
So I've been itching to image for some time now, but the weather didn't agree, so when I got the opportunity I jumped head first, with no time to prepare.
As all of you experienced astrophotoghrapher know, testing new stuff on the field usually isn't the greatest idea in the world.. unfortunately not having my own portable rig, and my hectic work life, I'm forced to go down that rabbit hole.
Anyways, flash forward >> I'm in the desert, the rig is setup, powering up everything to polar align... Then as Murphy so eloquently put it
everything that can go wrong went wrong.
-The Primary control PC didn't boot.
-The mount was misbehaving
-Terrible guiding
-and wind.
Totally frustrated, I abandoned the DSO I wanted to image, and thought I'd do some live stacking of short exposures. So I pointed at M81 an M82 and started, periodically having to stop and restart because the guiding was totally off. I was using the backup PC, to add insult to injury, it was not configured to save the raw files or stack for that matter, so 4 hours poof into the air.
By then I was super tired and annoyed, and was ready to just pack everything up, if it wasn't for
@Ahmed Waddah's encouragement to keep going.
So I pointed to m51, and fired up sharp cap, and went to sleep in the car, waking up every 50 mins re-center and go back to sleep. A desperate attempt to salvage a night totally gone wrong.
You can imagine my surprise when I finished processing the image, this is a rather good outcome considering:
-It was shot with a lens
-It is only 116.5 mins
-It's made up of 30s subs using 495gain
-The image train has tilt.
-I took 0 calibration files (no flats and no darks)
Thanks
@estabrook for encouraging me to post, and to
@Uwe Deutermann who's processing suggestions allowed me to make the stars look way better.
Clear Skies Everyone
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