Subject: M42 Orion nebula [85'x60', M+4.00], Orion

On a clear night, late enough in winter to make it appear in my back yard next to the house. I've been looking forward to shooting the third beginner target (and my second attempt at M42).

Bought a large antenna for the RPi for connection stability and switched to a hotspot configuration, connection seems more stable now. Though I still spent 2h of clear target time setting up and polar aligning with Ekos on the RPi due to Ekos crashes and communication issues with the camera. (loops of 'Refresh solver failed', 'PAA solver failed', 'failed to capture image', and getting stuck after a while of that). Setting the RPI as a remote INDI server and connecting with KStars on my macbook seemed to work, but it made the macbook app crash every time I wanted to capture an image. I'm starting to consider going for something with more support such as StellarMate or even ASIair to avoid these issues. In the end I managed to take around 2h of M42 before it disappeared below the shed.

I noticed that 2h of data is still quite tricky to work with in processing in these city conditions - the heart was easier to stretch with close to 5h of data. Nevertheless, a great improvement over my first try, it's stunning! A clear full-circle Orion, beautiful red/yellow/grey colours and nebulosity, and the blue/red running man clearly visible on the right. Happy with this filter. I've read about the core saturating the image which does seem to be the case, but could find no trace of this in a quick view of my histograms.

Spent the rest of the night on the Rosette nebula as it was still visible, but 2h of data on this was barely enough to see something. Surprising, as photons/pixel/s should be higher than for the Heart. The air was moist and dew point was reached, slowly covering the lens over the night which doesn't help. With the target low on the horizon and a full moon + street lamp shining into the night, the background was probably too dominant as well. Will try again starting earlier in the night to give it priority, curious to see what the difference will be.