Arp 316 and Hickson 44

11 15 Minute images resulting in 2h45m exposure time through my Celestron Edge HD1100 at native F/10. Due to guiding problems I had to discard more than half my subs so the total exposure time is very limited. I think the scene is very interesting so I may redo it at some point. Lots of fuzzy galaxy action besides the main characters. Arp 316 is made up of NGC 3187, NGC 3190 and NGC 3194. Hickson 44 includes the same 3 but adds NGC 3185. You'll notice a large donut shaped dust-mote (shadow). I did not take flats that night and also did not blow compressed 'air' over the IDAS LPS filter that covers my CCD. Two big mistakes! Luckily the image doesn't suffer terribly for it and I decided to publish anyway because the galaxies look pretty good.

The image below is about half scale click on it to get the full 1:1 image.

(click for 1:1 version)

Messier 1 (M1) - The Crab Nebula

15 15 Minute images resulting in 3h45m exposure time through my Celestron Edge HD1100 at native F/10. The conditions weren't great and I could have used a lot more exposure time but this was all I could gather before the target disappeared behind the trees for the season. The biggest challenge was a triple bad column in the middle of the image. I eventually found a way to remove the bad data by adding a new feature to my FixFits utility. I'll have to post an update soon. Frankly I thought my QHY8 camera was done but with this software patch there's still some life left in it. I did a generous crop as the area around M1 is pretty boring. The image below is almost 1:1, click on it to get the full 1:1 image.

(click for 1:1 version)

Occasional amp-glow in QHY8 images

Since upgrading the drivers for my QHY8 to the StarSci driver so I could benefit from the most recent Nebulosity 2 I've occasionally seen amp glow in my images. I have reported this before and not surprisingly this was either dismissed as user error or simply ignored. Not acceptable. There is a bug somewhere and it needs to be fixed. I can't have 20 minute exposures ruined because the amplifier in my camera is not turned of as it should be. Either Nebulosity isn't reliably telling the camera to turn the amp off before each exposure or the driver isn't reliably acting on the command to do so. This -never- happened with the old Tom van der Ede driver which I used for several years with excellent results. I was forced to upgrade to the StarSci driver because Nebulosity lost support for the TvdE driver. This meant I was stuck with an unsupported Nebulosity version. I took a gamble and upgraded my driver. I lost.

Below are the top left corners of three consecutive image taken with Nebulosity 2, as indicated by the file names that anyone who uses Nebulosity will recognize. In the middle of the sequence the amplifier is left on during one exposure, ruining it.

If either Stark Labs or QHY has ideas on how to debug this and determine the root cause I'd be happy to help.

Nebulosity 2.4.5, QHY8BASE.sys 0.0.9.0, Win XP Pro. Additional version information available on request.

Abstract

I've been trying to align my telescope (mount really) with solved images from astrometry.net. The results haven't been terrific. The resulting alignment is ballpark correct but not accurate enough. The following describes what I did in hopes that someone can point out the flaws.

Process

1. Aligned the scope in the traditional way (center on bright star and sync)
2. Centered TYC 3556-374-1
3. Took image (downsampled 2x for this article)
   
4. Solved image
5. Sync'd to solution
6. Issued goto to TYC 3556-374-1 (Cartes du Ciel in J2000 mode, coordinates as follows: Apparent RA: 19h38m34.070s DE:+46d 37'34.69",
   Mean of the date RA: 19h38m32.409s DE:+46d 37'14.07",
   Astrometric J2000 RA: 19h38m11.468s DE:+46d 35'36.49")
7. Took another image:
   
8. Star no longer centered.
9. Solved version here
10. Update: Elbrus solves match Astrometry.net solves. For the image with TYC 3556-374-1 centered the coordinates match very well: 294.547, 46.596