A year ago I screwed my DSLR to the back of my SCT and took my first blurry and barely-recognizable photo of a globular cluster, M3. It wasn't much, but it was enough to get me hooked on astrophotography. Last night, I returned to the scene of the crime.
I settled on 30-second subs to avoid blowing out the cluster's core, and I live-stacked them while enjoying the first mild night of spring outside. My final image stacks 185 frames for about 1.5 hours integration.
M3 was a relatively bright and easy target, even shooting near the horizon (at first), through the haze, and in the direction of a major airport's light pollution. I used the Optolong L-Pro filter filter to take the edge off, and somehow I managed to finish the project before the waning gibbous moon rose high enough to to interfere. The final image is a little noisy, but I enjoyed completing a project in just one night--and before midnight, no less.
(Captured: C6, AVX, Hyperstar, ASI183MC Pro, Optolong L-Pro filter. Processed: Astro Pixel Processor, Photoshop, and Gradient Xterminator.)
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