I started this image when Orion was rising at 3am and finished it four months later, with Orion setting at approximately the same time.
During that project I learned the secrets of guiding (basically: align and balance as well as possible) and how exactly dew can ruin your night. I suffered a horrible blow in November when the nebula was clearly visible with the naked eye despite the light pollution and 5 hours of perfectly focused material with less than 1.5" RMS guding error went down the drain because a test connection to Ekos at the begining of the night had left the camera in JPEG mode, but this only increased my determination.
PLEASE NOTE: I used almost exclusively 60 second and 120 second subs (about 400 in total), except in a few cases that the camera run out of battery or I interrupted exposure earlier by accident. In the acquisition details you will see the total integration time per night as one sub and 16 subs in total. This is for two reasons: first, I have no way of remembering what combination of subs Astropixel Processor kept from each night
. Second, I really integrated each night separately, then subtracted light pollution and finally integrated again, so the end result really is the integration of 16 "master subs".
See you next year, Orion.
Comments