This is my first-ever observation of these objects. The Draco Triplet is easy to find; despite the fact that there are no especially bright stars in Draco, there are enough fairly bright stars nearby on which to line up the Telrad that I found it immediately; also there are good asterisms to line up on. NGC 5982 is bright enough it is easily visible at 2 s in the imager. There's a good deal of gusty wind tonight complicating matters. Chiller at 2.25 A, 11 °C to start. I started east of the meridian, so to get a lot of subframes I'm going to need to do a flip and remember to readjust my counterweights. The meridian flip was successful and I continued imaging until dawn. Most of the subs turned out fine despite the wind, so my balance was pretty good. Signal-to-noise was good enough I could push the digital development further than I usually do.
Date: 4 Jun 2013
Subject: NGC 5981, 5982, & 5985, the Draco Triplet
Scope: AT8IN + HPS Coma Corrector
Filter: None
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.2
Camera: DSI IIc (chiller at ~2.25 A, T = 8 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.6, no dither
Exposure: 51x300 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3 Crop; Rotate; Wipe:Color & Brightness; Develop 97.85%; Contrast; HDR
ptimize; Sharpen; Deconvolute: 3.0 pix; Track; Color:Bottom 2.0, Top Full, Sat 600%; Magic:Shrink 1; Magic:Tighten 1; Repair:Warp; Select bright stars & Magic:Shrink 1, Shrink 1, Tighten (bright stars) 3; Life:Heavy. CS6+Astronomy Tools increase star color; deep space noise reduction; space noise reduction; less crunchy more fuzzy using a layer mask; AstroFrame.
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