M101 - The start of DSO imaging on a C14 Edge HD (Phil Hoppes)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5447 · NGC 5449 · NGC 5450 · NGC 5451 · NGC 5453 · NGC 5455 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5461 · NGC 5462 · Pinwheel galaxy

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M101 - The start of DSO imaging on a C14 Edge HD

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M101 - The start of DSO imaging on a C14 Edge HD

Thought I would post this for a baseline of my progress for the future. I focused on M101 last the night before after my success with M97. I still have a long list of to-dos with respect to fine tuning my C14 DSO workflow. When I planned this setup I assumed I would need to use OAG with the longer focal length of the C14. There are some challenges in doing that. I think because I have an AP1600AE mount I can take an alternate plan to DSO and focus on dec-arc modeling and scrap guiding all together. The issues I'm seeing is 1) I have tried on multiple nights just to get an OAG to see stars and I've not been successful. The long focal length I'm sure has a lot to do with that, but for the moment OAG for me is a no-go. I don't see that improving especially because my setup is an urban setup so I will always have Bortle 6-8 skies. 2) The new C14 Edge does have mirror locks and they "kinda" keep the mirror from moving but not really. So far, the best fix for this I see is lots of intermittent autofocus sessions. I did that last night on a different target and it worked quite well. This fix for mirror flop, however, also runs counter to OAG since you lose your guiding when you are doing an autofocus. If I tried this then I would have to recenter after every auto-guide session. Possible but not ideal. The Dec-Arc model path is quite promising as I don't need to worry about guiding at all. The initial time spent building a model I have to believe is less that the time I would spend doing continuous repointing. I will still need to concentrate on autofocus but there are some solutions to that also that I want to look into.

Messier Objects
Images from the EdgeHD Series
Arizona Astrophotographers
Imaged with N.I.N.A.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9660844
PixInsight job	27ZF6YNHS07U33YXMFZ6WYTDRVDNV260
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	14h03m04s.443
RA (top/left)	14h01m59s.999
RA (top/right)	14h01m58s.695
RA (bottom/right)	14h04m08s.170
RA (bottom/left)	14h04m11s.130

Dec (center)	+54°20′59″.28
Dec (top/left)	+54°35′43″.92
Dec (top/right)	+54°06′28″.26
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°06′16″.30
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°35′32″.30

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M101 - The start of DSO imaging on a C14 Edge HD

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M101 - The start of DSO imaging on a C14 Edge HD

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