Back in the Horsehead Saddle Again (Steve Lantz)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: 50 zet Ori · Alnitak · B33 · Flame Nebula · Horsehead nebula · IC 434 · IC 435 · LBN 953 · LBN 954 · NGC 2023 · NGC 2024 · Orion B · Sh2-277 · The star Alnitak (ζOri)

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Back in the Horsehead Saddle Again

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Back in the Horsehead Saddle Again

In an effort to make taking the 4" refractor out a quicker set up, I've ordered an ASIAir. My EQM-35 mount is pretty finicky when it comes to getting the drive gearing meshed just right for both DEC and DA (a number of imagers with this mount have reported guiding problems because of large DEC excursions). So in preparation for setting up the ASIAir I decided to get into the gears, really be careful about their mesh tightness/looseness being just right, and perform some guiding tests with PHD2. On a clear and cold (I hate the cold, BTW) night, out I went. My mount has a habit of kicking out of PHD2, but this night it didn't, so the gear mesh must have been better. Later stacking of subs of a random star field showed some movement from frame to frame, but not as much as before. So there is hope for the mount after all. Anyway, after a couple of hours on that task, I decided to keep going and image the Horsehead and Flame nebulae. Getting the mount repositioned and everything dialed in on the new target took a while and because I was tired, cold and sleepy, I settled for 45 minutes of integration time in the form of 45 60-minute exposures plus calibration frames. Really, I wanted to see if the guiding would work on the real thing, which it did. I used Start Tools, Photoshop, and Topaz AI for the post-processing. The short integration time was a problem, but the image turned out to be decent at least and gave me some confidence that the EQM-35 mount will work with ASIAir.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
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This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
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Amateur hosting facility
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Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5360900
PixInsight job	C4MYWIQALEWE6JZQ7YM9SKDMQBKV7NDE
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	05h41m36s.58
RA (top/left)	05h39m33s.76
RA (top/right)	05h39m38s.76
RA (bottom/right)	05h43m39s.54
RA (bottom/left)	05h43m34s.72

Dec (center)	-02°12′56″.7
Dec (top/left)	-01°36′44″.2
Dec (top/right)	-02°50′07″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	-02°49′13″.6
Dec (bottom/left)	-01°35′43″.4

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Back in the Horsehead Saddle Again

Back in the Horsehead Saddle Again

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Image Index:

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Back in the Horsehead Saddle Again

Back in the Horsehead Saddle Again

Equipment

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