M97 & M108, 18 Apr 2013 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 108 · M 97 · NGC 3556 · NGC 3587 · Owl Nebula

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M97 & M108, 18 Apr 2013

M97 & M108 are easy to find by lining the Telrad up on the upper left star of the Dipper's bowl, but I had a lot of trouble because of their position in the sky near the zenith. I had to perform contortions to be able to see these through the Telrad. To make focus I had to use a 45° diagonal mirror, which also caused problems. Then the orientation of the camera was tricky. Then the guiding suddenly went major wonky. But now I think everything is settled down and decent-looking results are coming in. There are a few high clouds tonight. Seeing earlier (when I was doing lunar imaging with the AT8IN) was terrible, but it seems to have settled down now. No chiller on the camera; it's a cold night and I'm running at 6 °C.

In the B revision, reprocessed using star average white balance. There was some amp glow-like gradient in the upper right that I reduced with GradientXterminator and some cropping.

Date: 18 Apr 2013

Subject: M97, M108

Scope: Orion ST80

Filter: Baader Planetarium UHC-S

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.2

Camera: DSI IIc (no chiller, T = ~4 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.5, no dither

Exposure: 67x300 s

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

Processing: StarTools 1.3 Crop; Develop; Color:Saturation 225%, Bottom 2, Top 1.4; HDR:Equalize; Sharpen; Deconvolute:3.0 pix; Track; Magic:Shrink 1; Mask in bright stars; Magic:Tighten 9, 9; Color:Sat 64%; Life:Moderate. CS6 Astronomy Tools star color enhance; AstroFrame.

Original
Final
B

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6456202
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