I had been shooting a lot of things with blue in them, so I decided to focus this time on something with more red in it.
It's been a rough year for data capture here in Northern Arizona. The monsoon this year delivered more clouds than rain but, either way, I have been needing to get time in when I can and to be patient in order to get the amount of data I want.
An extra bonus in this image are all the little galaxies. There's one on the top left-ish that I even applied some masked HDRMT to in order to bring out the details in the spiral arms a bit.
I am finding the small improvements in Pixinsight to be pretty helpful. HDRMT doesn't require separate HSI extraction and recombination anymore since the developers included a check box to just apply the process to lightness, which is especially time saving and simple. WBPP allows for separate channel integration while 1x drizzle. Although I didn't use the separate channel integration on this image shot with my Newtonian, it will come in handy with SCT and maybe refractor images. I can (finally!) "Command" "A" lists and PI can now properly calculate appropriate disc space on my Mac.
This is also my first image with the new secondary spider I got through Starizona that is made by Backyard Universe.
https://starizona.com/products/secondary-spider-for-skywatcher-250-cnc-machined?_pos=2&_sid=7b6da19c5&_ss=r It helps a bit with collimation in that it is more rigid and counters the force of turning the secondary screws making it easier to see what the screw turning is doing in the Catseye Collimation eyepieces, and it also assures nice diffraction spikes since it is more perfectly straight than the stock Quattro spider. I am awaiting a fancy focuser which may help keep more consistent collimation ast the scope tracks from lower altitudes, and if not, it'll look rad. It's better to look good than feel good, and I want my telescope to look marvelous!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0RTD7250II
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