M1 - a crab effort (Tom Gray)

M1 - a crab effort

I have spent the last couple of weeks under cloudy skies, restoring an old Meade 'LX6' drive base, which I was very generously given. On arrival this actually turned out to be a 'premier' model (basic LX6 drive with Meade 'Smartdrive' PPEC). I also managed to get hold of an old LX6 handbox (like 'hen's teeth', which has some interesting modifications - the subject of a future post).

On a few occasions I have been able to test this through holes in the clouds, with my trusty LX5 OTA on the forks. To say the least I was rather disappointed with the tracking accuracy. A full strip down, clean (grease, gunge and rust from many years storage) and refit has vastly improved this, such that I was able to get ~1.5" RMS in unsteady seeing, and begin to train the 'smartdrive'.

I may have improved the periodic and other drive train errors, but could do little about the seeing, and I appear to have knocked my collimation out. This demanding image of M1 was taken at f10 (2000mm) in part to test out the 'new' drive. Just shy of an hour of integration, with 120s subs (the most conditions would allow), through my Optolong L-eNhance narrow band filter, produced something that could be mistaken for the crab nebula.

Subs were stacked and aligned, and processed in Nebulosity. I had difficulty setting the black point, possibly due to glare from a waning moon, and lack of exposure and integration resulted in a rather 'crabby' image. Still great to be out again, if getting colder, and I saw a lovely draconid (long and slow) and aurigid (short and fast). Things are looking up!

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Description: Aligned, combined and white-balanced stack from Nebulosity, processed in Startools. Noise reduction is a bit better and able to tidy up stars and odd artefacts.

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Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
Optolong L-eNhance filter
UK Astro-Imaging

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3922645
PixInsight job	BPRAJK559SN2DJOKCWQ2YJNTOENNPWVS
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h34m28s.527
RA (top/left)	05h34m58s.831
RA (top/right)	05h33m58s.113
RA (bottom/right)	05h33m58s.371
RA (bottom/left)	05h34m58s.943

Dec (center)	+22°00′52″.92
Dec (top/left)	+22°06′08″.92
Dec (top/right)	+22°06′02″.50
Dec (bottom/right)	+21°55′41″.53
Dec (bottom/left)	+21°55′48″.90

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M1 - a crab effort

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