New home, new mount, new camera! It's been months since I shot the night sky. Been very busy with prepping and selling our old home, looking for and purchasing a new home, and all the chaos that ensues because of it. Holidays, work, and family took precedence over the months....and of course waiting for my Mach2GTO order that eventually was fulfilled after the New Year. The new home brought me out to darker skies, from and average SQM of 17.4 up to 19.6, with more visible sky than what I had in the city. I am also a lot closer to even darker sites if I wish to go mobile. I may eventually build an observatory in the back yard, just have to run it by the town I live in (no HOA!) The only downside for astronomy is that my neighborhood unfortunately has streetlights. A fair compromise for what is a dream house otherwise. Happy wife, happy life!

About the image. I did a test run over a few nights and picked something easy that ultimately turned rather difficult. I was learning the ropes with Voyager Imaging on my new Mach2GTO and just set up outside of my garage and pointed at M42 and started shooting away. I had my mind on other things and didn't notice that my scope was picking up horrible glare from the HPS streetlights in front of my house. Despite using narrowband filters, my subs showed an outrageous light gradient moving across every frame. I am learning the nuances of the ZWO ASI294MM Pro and made the error of running at 0 Gain while collecting narrowband at way too short of an exposure. I didn't discover this until after I had started pre-processing my subs and was wondering why I had such horrible banding that wouldn't calibrate out.

I took my lumps, but had a lot of fun learning the new equipment and software running it. I had to crop my image off because I could not fully remove the light gradient and the Running Man looked light a blob of pudding because of it. I focused on the nebula and made the best of it. I made an SHO blend and an HOO blend and combined them together to produce the final image. If you could see the mess that was the raw data, you would be surprised as much as I was at what I could salvage.

After many M42 images on this site this winter imaging season, here is mine.... for now.

Clear skies