This is an attempt at a widefield shot of M8 and M20. Finding them with the Telrad at this imaging scale is trivially easy; it's just point and frame up. I've set the guide rate to its lowest setting in an attemp to improve my guiding. I'm using the new Peltier/heat sink/fan combination and wondering if it will produce vibration; it's noisy. Chiller at 2.25 A currently giving 7.0 °C. Winds came up during the run. I'm having a hard time getting enough time on these southern objects as I'm just running into obstructions. I'm also beginning to be frustrated by the poor optical quality from using the guide scope + focal reducer as an imaging train. This just is pretty far from optimal.
Date: 13 Aug 2013
Subject: M8 and M20, Lagoon & Trifid Nebulae
Scope: 9x50 Finder/Guider + Antares 0.5x Focal Reducer (at ~1”, 0.6x)
Filter: Baader Planetarium UHC-S
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)
Guiding: Orion ST80 + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.2
Camera: DSI IIc (TES1-12704 chiller at 2.25 A, large heat sink & fan, T = 7 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.7, no dither
Exposure: 16x240 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.244 Crop; Wipe:Color & Brightness; Develop 74.99%; Contrast; HDR:Reveal Core; Sharpen; Deconvolute: 2.4 pix; Color
ark 1.5, Bright:3.0, Sat 745%; Life:Heavy; Track; Crop; Magic:Shrink 1. CS6+Astronomy Tools Deep Space NR; Space NR; Levels; Desaturate a little; AstroFrame.
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