Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Gemini (Gem)  ·  Contains:  Extremely wide field
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Mon, CMi, Hya, Cnc, Gem, Tau, & Ori, Nikkolai Davenport
Mon, CMi, Hya, Cnc, Gem, Tau, & Ori
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Mon, CMi, Hya, Cnc, Gem, Tau, & Ori

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Mon, CMi, Hya, Cnc, Gem, Tau, & Ori, Nikkolai Davenport
Mon, CMi, Hya, Cnc, Gem, Tau, & Ori
Powered byPixInsight

Mon, CMi, Hya, Cnc, Gem, Tau, & Ori

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Description

Decided to try something different last night. The battery for my AVX died on me before I could image anything, but I still had clear skies. So I switched over to using the Omegon Minitrack LX3. I think this might actually be my first successful attempt at using this little sky tracker.

For such a short total integration time, I'm amazed at how much shows up in this image. The most prominent DSOs are the Orion Nebula and Rosette Nebula, but you can also spot the Horsehead, Flame, Monkey Head, and Jellyfish nebulae. You can even make out the shapes of the Flaming Star and Tadpole nebulae at the very top of the frame. While at the bottom of the frame, there's the subtle hint of the Seagull Nebula. The most striking object in this capture might be the Beehive Cluster in the constellation of Cancer as it sits out there all by itself away from the band of the Milky Way.

This capture was somewhat exploratory for me. I knew that shooting wide open at f/3.5 with the Fuji XC 15-45mm lens would have severe off-axis aberrations, but I didn't know to what extent. I was also unaware of just how much vignetting there was at 15mm fl. I failed to successfully capture flats. So I had to attempt to correct for it while processing. It's not perfect, but I think I did an okay job with it. The thing I like most about this image though, and shooting wide in general, is that I can see so much more detail than I can in Stellarium. Being able to see more of the surrounding nebulosity, and how these object interconnect, especially with large emission nebula like Barnard's Loop and the region surrounding the Rosette Nebula, really helps to better inform the framing and composition decision making process when shooting at longer focal lengths. So this really is an exploratory capture, in every sense of the word.

This image amounts to 11m 15s total integration time: 45x 15" subs, 36 darks, 50 bias, stacked and processed with AstroPixelProcessor. Final noise reduction and color adjustment in Photoshop. Captured with the Fuji X-T100 and Fuji XC 15-45mm lens at 15mm fl, f/3.5, ISO6400. I captured flats as well using my iPhone screen as a flat field light source, but it didn't work out. I also captured a total of 200 light frames, but the dew gremlins got the better of me. Only the first 45 subs were any good.

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