Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cancer (Cnc)  ·  Contains:  Beehive  ·  M 44  ·  NGC 2632  ·  Part of the constellation Cancer (Cnc)  ·  Praesepe Cluster  ·  The star Asellus Australis (δCnc)  ·  The star Asellus Borealis (γCnc)  ·  The star ηCnc  ·  The star θCnc
A Beehive in Cancer, Richard
A Beehive in Cancer
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A Beehive in Cancer

A Beehive in Cancer, Richard
A Beehive in Cancer
Powered byPixInsight

A Beehive in Cancer

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Moving over to using APT for my previous session I found it to have many advantages over simply using the camera cable release, coupled with reviewing images on the camera LCD screen. So again using APT with some "proper" shooting profiles in place, I wanted to focus on maintaining sharp focus and eliminating drift and trailing with decent polar alignment and constant monitoring (with the PoleMaster). This proved successful overall and resulted in some of my sharpest frames to date, along with more data than I usually capture. Unfortunately my composition on M44 ultimately suffered from a neighbouring house chimney creeping into the frame, which meant the necessary square crop and an abrupt end to capture by about shot 28!

21x light frames / 30s / f4.5 / ISO 400

10x dark frames

41x flat frames

~50x bias frames

As usual, image calibration, registration and integration performed in PixInsight, followed by the crop, stretch, and colour calibration before importing into Lightroom for some basic editing of highlights, noise reduction, contrast, dehaze and some hot pixel removal.

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A Beehive in Cancer, Richard

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Camera Lens Astrophotography