Upon finishing Thor's Helmet, I found myself staring at a clear weekend and could not waste it making an OTA/camera switch. So...one more image with the FSQ 106 before sending it off for correction. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that NGC 2403 was not a bad fit, with a little crop, for the FSQ 106/ASI 1600 FOV (native). I had not previously seen this target (I wish I had known about it while shooting with the TOA 130). Even before I read about this galaxy I said to myself...this really resembles M33. Sure enough-"an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis. It is an outlying member of the M81 Group, and is approximately 8 million light-years distant. It bears a similarity to M33, being about 50,000 light years in diameter and containing numerous star-forming H II regions"...Wikipedia. It is not quite as evolved as M33 - being an intermediate Spiral, while M33 is a full fledged spiral - but it is of similar size and distance, and has a similar "feel".

This has proven to be a tough shoot. The initial clear weekend turned into one solid gale, with 38-46 mph gusts. I was lucky to finish the RGB stacks, and got enough Ha to make it interesting. I had originally wanted 2 hours each of RGB and 8-10 hours of Lum, with a decent amount of Ha. Well, seeing and stability did not provide for the capture of luminance (I was lucky to finish the blue stack - the night started out well, but degraded quickly. So I collected Ha instead. Now the Moon will be returning along with a week of snow. So, this will have to do for now. Time is running short as well--I only get about 3-4 hours/night before it sinks below 30 degrees. I do still hope to capture a decent luminance channel. Meanwhile, I used a synthetic luminance created from the best RGB subs (used 118 with the lowest FWHM). A solid proper luminance will help bring out the faint outer extensions, and hopefully increase the resolution in the disc. I got carried away with the crop for the original version--its a bit too close. Since it can't be fixed without starting from scratch, this will have do for the initial posting.

Version B includes 2 hours of luminance. I had to use 60 sec subs due to the brightness of my sky. I wanted twice as much but the clouds rolled in unexpectedly.

Final version includes 4 hours of luminance