Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pegasus (Peg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7317  ·  NGC 7318  ·  NGC 7319  ·  NGC 7320
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Stephan's Quintet - 20221030 - C6 at F7.3, altazastro
Stephan's Quintet - 20221030 - C6 at F7.3
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Stephan's Quintet - 20221030 - C6 at F7.3

Acquisition type: Electronically-Assisted Astronomy (EAA, e.g. based on a live video feed)
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Stephan's Quintet - 20221030 - C6 at F7.3, altazastro
Stephan's Quintet - 20221030 - C6 at F7.3
Powered byPixInsight

Stephan's Quintet - 20221030 - C6 at F7.3

Acquisition type: Electronically-Assisted Astronomy (EAA, e.g. based on a live video feed)

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Description

While waiting for Jupiter to appear rather briefly between two buildings, I took the chance to try this famous and difficult target with the simple technique of EAA.
Integration time was clearly insufficient for this target and also sky transparency was far for optimal, even by city standard, given the lack of rain in weeks.
Nevertheless, since this is the first time I somewhat take a picture of this difficult target, I decided to publish it anyway.
The C6 was working at slightly less than 1100 mm focal length, with 2.4 um pixels, so exposure time had to be short and a "pseudo lucky imaging" technique was the best option.
The choice of live stacking was due mainly to semplicity and no flats, just darks were used, and those too taken from a library and not even shot on the same night.
Finally I did not use any filter (not even an IR cut) with the aim of collecting as much light as possible, and thinking that the Schmidt corrector was thin enough as a refractive element not too trouble the focusing of IR light too much.
Unfortunately I forgot that on the optical train there was also the focal reducer, and that one has plenty of refractive elements, so stars are surely more bloated than they would have been had I used an IR Cut filter, and probably detail too suffered a bit.

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Stephan's Quintet - 20221030 - C6 at F7.3, altazastro