I waited until late in the season to capture the Rosette for the first time. All imaging and processing sessions are learning experiences for me and some more than others. This being a prime example of that. I'm still coming to terms with my new equipment but finding it very rewarding.

I like to capture 12 plus hours before I start stacking which makes for a lot of subs. To avoid my observatory laptop hanging during the stacking process (next on the acquisition list is more RAM) I try to take longer subs than I probably should. My mount is really not accurate enough to pull off more than 60 second subs without trailing but the wider FOV is so much more forgiving than my SCT not to mention much more capable of funneling light at F5.5.

I'm also starting to get much more discerning with quality of subs stacked which I select with the sub frame selector script in PI. For more information I highly recommend checking out the tutorial by Astrobin user Linda. Through the script I rejected 2.5 hours of data stacking only 9.45 hours of the 11.85 hours captured. Before this script I would have rejected only the worst few frames with egregious star doubling and never for lack or roundness. When you see a graph in subframe selector showing you how bad your frames are for eccentricity etc, the decision to reject the offending frames is easy.

Another great addition to my astroimaging is APT. Many thanks to Ivaylo for his continuous work updating the platform. APT allows for much more hands off imaging including automatic imaging though the meridian via platesolving which is also used for scripted image change again completely automatic. The big plus of this is that I can image one object from astronomical twilight until it disappears behind a neighbor's tree at 1am when I'm fast asleep, change to a different target that is just becoming visible and is centered perfectly again via automatic platesolving, and image that object until dawn. At this point the script can park the scope and warm the camera among a host of other features.