It was..., it was the worst of times! But here's an Owl Nebula anyway (Alex Woronow)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 97 · NGC 3587 · Owl Nebula · PK148+57.1

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It was..., it was the worst of times! But here's an Owl Nebula anyway

Powered byPixInsight

It was..., it was the worst of times! But here's an Owl Nebula anyway

I got a new telescope...a Stellina. If you've never heard of it, it's an automatic telescope. Turn it on and it opens then aligns to the stars. Poke a target on your iPad or Android device and Stellina goes there and starts taking images. The images are 10" each and get culled, calibrated, and stacked internally, then transmitted (via its own Wifi) to your phone or pad device. Image B is the image I saw on the screen after 200+ exposures.

OK, so I tried it, and it works just as advertised. Then I decided to process the subs in PixInsight. The night I capture the images was the clearest in the two weeks before and now in another week after...but "clearest" is a relative term! We had heavy smoke from first in Az (you could see and smell it). There was light and growing cloud cover, which eventually obscured the target (and everything else). Winds and gusts plagued the acquisition. And to get any images at all, I had to start in the middle of twilight and end, when the clouds came in, before the end of twilight.

So, with those excuses made, I tossed about 130 images of the 200+ acquired and used PI to stack the rest. Oh yes, I forgot to get any dark subs, so there's no calibration applied to the above image and this necessitated some pretty aggressive denoising!

So, I would guess that this image is about 20% of the attainable quality. And, judging by the plethora of Owl Neb images here and elsewhere on the internet, I'd say the little Stellina did very well indeed. If the weather cooperates some time in the next few months, I try shooting this target again and see what comes out of it.

Comments welcomed.

Alex

Final
Original
B

B

Description: This is what my iPad showed toward the end of the capture session. This, then, is the result of Stellina's onboard processing only.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4695635
PixInsight job	3ALO13BMCMXPL3OZ46S9K0ZH6OCK60TV
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	11h14m48s.46
RA (top/left)	11h18m26s.91
RA (top/right)	11h11m08s.93
RA (bottom/right)	11h11m06s.70
RA (bottom/left)	11h18m31s.89

Dec (center)	+55°01′11″.4
Dec (top/left)	+54°39′25″.8
Dec (top/right)	+54°39′39″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+55°22′31″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	+55°22′17″.7

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It was..., it was the worst of times! But here's an Owl Nebula anyway

It was..., it was the worst of times! But here's an Owl Nebula anyway

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It was..., it was the worst of times! But here's an Owl Nebula anyway

It was..., it was the worst of times! But here's an Owl Nebula anyway

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