M47 with Improved Focus, 12 Mar 2014 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Puppis (Pup) · Contains: M 47 · NGC 2422

M47 with Improved Focus, 12 Mar 2014

The moon is quite bright tonight, and this is my first target. I started trying with 180 s subs and the skyglow was horrible, so I backed off to 60 s. CCD started at 10 °C and cooled to about 7 °C. My goal is to improve my focusing, so I’ll stop and check focus periodically because I want to see if it is drifting as my tube cools down. I'm using Shoestring's FocusPal tonight and it does seem to control the FCUSB better than Shoestring Focus does; I can use pulses and they work. Checked focus after 60 subs and it was way off. I used Nebulosity fine focus to fix it. This is the stack of 60-sec subframes taken after I fine-tuned the focus using Nebulosity fine focus. Focusing made a big difference; all the stars look tighter. So I learned a few things: don't just rely on the Bhatinov mask and trust that all will be well the whole night, refocus periodically, and use FocusPal under Windows as for some reason it seems to work better than Mac Shoestring Focus.

Date: 12 Mar 2014

Subject: M47 (open cluster)

Scope: AT8IN + 0.5x Antares telereducer

Filter: Baader Planetarium UHC-S

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors, PicGoto Simplificado)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 2.2.1 (Win 7 ASCOM)

Camera: DSI IIc no chiller T = 10 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.2.0, no dither

Exposure: 37 x 60 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3.5.279 Crop; Wipe 85%; Develop 75.27%; Color (Scientific) sat. 301%; Contrast; Life Less is More; Track read noise compensation 4.9%. CS6 Astronomy Tools Astro Frame.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6651041
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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