This is first light for my SharpStar 150 f/2.8 HNT (which I've had since Christmas) and the Baader highspeed filters.
Weather-wise, this has been the worst summer I've had since I started imaging. I think I've only had a handful of nights that were perfectly clear start to finish. Every other night I either had to start early, shut down early or trash half my data (it took me four nights just to get 2.8 hours of usable green subs!). Equally frustrating: Terrible forecasts (in both directions) and Dark Sky shutting down its Android app. More frustrating: The inability to get either scope I'm working with 100% perfectly collimated (sorry for the funky star shapes - I advise you not to zoom in).
I'm also feeling very out of practice when it comes to processing. I not only started from scratch five times, but I made a few major mistakes early on that resulted in some ugly color mottle and other issues in attempt No. 4, but I was unable to get attempt No. 5 anywhere near where I wanted to take it, so I gave up on my fifth attempt, returned to version 4, fixed what I could (thanks to input from
Alan Pham,
Doug Struble and
Derek Santiago) and am calling it a day.
I reserve the right to come back to these data at a later date and publish something completely different.
I say that in part because I never feel very sure of myself when I do SHO images - it's both the cause and effect for why I tend to not do too many of them.
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