M45 my formative years (John Favalessa)

M45 my formative years

many years ago when I was a teen, the first time I looked through someone's telescope, the target was the Pleiades. I still remember how stunned I was and how I feel in love with the night sky. I've been at this marathon of a hobby for a year now and wanted to do justice to this cluster. It's taken me weeks to get good subs.

the pain: tried many nights with just my flattener, learned I needed to do a mosaic, but that never quite came out acceptable. so tried many nights with my Starizona reducer. Had all kinds of vignetting and ringing issues using from my backyard (still working out with Starizona). From dark site, bortle 4, these issues are greatly reduce and can be processed out, but I needed another night. So on the new moon night it was clear, packed up, when up to the mountain, setup, and my CGEM II failed...the RA motor went out. next day troubleshooting I swapped the motor cables and the RA still failed. ah the motor for sure, right? I swapped out the motor with a spare I had and it worked, but when I installed back in housing, it failed again. so not the motor! I flashed the firmware and loosened the screws on the mother board (maybe a flexing issue?) and the RA worked again! but the DEC now failed. I swapped the DEC with the original RA motor and it worked! Tested that night in my backyard and best guiding ever (0.75"), but through out the subs due to vignetting issues. Next night up to the dark mountain, moon set at 10pm, and finally got more good data. I've ordered a CEM70G, but on backorder.

Original
Final
B

B

Description: toned down the contrast and the local histogram equalization. Thanks Mike for the suggestions.

Uploaded: ...

ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4169352
PixInsight job	AOIG81M87X62ULUBPATW5KHJ7Q0TLQFK
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	03h46m42s.80
RA (top/left)	03h44m06s.79
RA (top/right)	03h41m53s.63
RA (bottom/right)	03h49m14s.61
RA (bottom/left)	03h51m36s.00

Dec (center)	+24°04′04″.2
Dec (top/left)	+25°28′20″.7
Dec (top/right)	+23°01′09″.2
Dec (bottom/right)	+22°39′41″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	+25°06′29″.10

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