Galaxy season 2022 was off to a great start. Two weeks of clear skies during a new Moon?! The total exposure time for all 7 galaxy images in this series clocked in at a whopping 35 hours!
What a marathon it was. This definitely makes up for the poor winter months! Nights near the beginning of March were generally pretty cold (-5 to 1 degree C) with low humidity and good transparency. Dew would freeze on the outside of the telescope. Luckily, the mirrors stayed frost-free.
I was still learning more about proper collimation of an f/4 imaging Newtonian, and I used these nights to refine my technique and understanding. A fully flat field with seeing limited star spots would require more work, but some of my test data was looking pretty good in the center.
Although this integration is very short, the animation below shows there's definitely been progress in the past 4 years and this made me pretty happy.
2018 vs 2022
The old image is 2 hours of exposure with an 80mm APO refractor, Bortle 9,
March 2018
Comments