20261101 Area around IC5070 NGC 6997 and NGC 8989

This is a 1.1x mosaic around IC5070, I found this interesting in the Sky Atlas mode so this will be the composition.  Expect to spend 1.5 hours with it, i.e. the whole session.

The side effect of doing a 1.1x mosaic is that, the edge of the frame will become less noise affected due to field rotation.  But of course, at the expense of longer exposure time.

Maybe I shall try using the EQ mode so as to avoid the problem of field rotation.

20261022 Short Observation Session: Comet 161P

Back home at around 10:00pm, so started rather late.

Moon hanging high and bright around, a storm is coming so I shall try to do something or else there's no more chance for the coming few days.

Pulled out my reclined chair for binocular observations, seeing those fuzzy patches of light are great.

Turned the S30 to 161P, maybe spend half an hour with it.  

55 minutes finally, it's right in the middle.  Field rotation is obvious and I have to crop it a bit.  Maybe I shall try EQ mode again, for some reason it didn't work a few months ago.

20261018 Western and Eastern Veil by Canon 200mm + 552mc pro and the Propella Nebula by S30

Started at around 19:40, the Canon 200mm setup is guided with a 230mm guidescope.  Yes, the guider is longer focal length than the main scope.

Take a few initial shots with 120s exposures, total four of them.

Then, I pushed the exposure to 300s.  There are some guiding errors after like 8 shots for unknown reasons, and 4 of them are ruined by random satellites in the sky.

Dropping back to 160s exposures, 42 in total.  Result pending processing.

And then the Propella Nebula by the S30, this target is not in the database of the S30 but it's not difficult to locate it.  Just around (NW of) Sadr of Cygnus.  Total 2 hours 26 minutes:

Surprisingly good.

20261017 A night of debugging, trying out Canon FD 300mm new adapter, Omicron Cygni and the Ghosts of Cassiopeia IC59 and IC63

I setup my FD Canon 300mm f2.8 before darkness came, roughly focused with a remote tree.

Did a quick polar alignment after dinner and started imaging from around 7:30pm.  The polar alignment is still quite good, only a very minor tweak.

I swinged the Canon to Omicron Cygni for 60s guided exposure, will keep on for maybe like an hour?  Just to see how it works out.  

Maybe it's the first real imaging session after 3D printing the new adapter with carbon fibre filament.  

After around 10 exposures for 60s each, stacking failed and I found that the mount somehow drifted away.  I then fixed it and jump to 120s exposure each.  

So far it's alright and I will go for bathing after six exposures, and then let it go on.

I have accumulated more than an hour of data, but the result was not that good.  Some processing required.

I then moved to Eastern Veil Nebula (C33), pushing gain to high and turn on cooling.  But for some unknown reason, it always fails to stack.  The sky is clear, and the image is not bad, maybe field rotated or?  (also field rotated, EQ tracking should not rotate but the new adapter did rotate) Need to see why later.  (Found out why, it's all overexposed, the frames are all white)

Try again with M33, just a test.  120s exposure, medium gain, -10 degree cooling.  Not really useful results due to the above bugs.

Call it a night of debugging.

And then the S30 is out as well, pointing at the Ghosts of Cassiopeia as planned, will spend the rest of the night with it.  Over 2.5 hours of exposure:

20261017 Binocular Solar Observation and planning for tonight

AR4551 and AR4557 occupied the middle of the solar disc, both showing much detail at 18x handheld image stablisied.

Great for a quick look.

I even tried to observe indoor through dirty window glass.  Maybe it's just 18x, I found most detail are still there.  Lazy guy setup indeed.

Planning:

The forecast is very favorable tonight.  

The S30 will be up and capturing something again, potential candidates:

1. The Ghosts of Cassiopeia (IC 59 & IC 63)

2. The Propeller Nebula (Simeis 57)

Maybe I shall use my Canon FD 300mm f2.8 again tonight with my 533mc pro?  It's now well adapted with my JMI focuser together with a EAF Pro.   Or shall I focus on using the Canon 200mm with my 6D?  

20261016 Omicron Cygni Region

This one is even more elusive, probably pushing the limit of the S30.

I will spend the whole observation session on it, in the hope to bring out those thin and delicate structures of the nebulous area.

Two hours of exposure, processed only by the S30:

Not bad for this very dim target.  The upper right and the lower right corners are suffering from noise due to field rotation, so these areas were not overlapped enough among all frames.

20261013 West of Gamma Cygni (Sadr) Region

I will dedicate the whole session to this area, a very large diffused nebula.

Total 2.5 hours of exposure.

Lovely.

20261011 Not so clear night M52 with NGC 7635 and NGC 7538

The forecast was good but the sky didn't really clear up until 9:00pm.  Not really cleared at all, but it worths to pull out the S30.

So I am re-doing M52, framing NGC 7635 as well NGC 7538 too.

Started at 9:05pm, and I hope I can get more than an hour of exposure.

81 minutes finally: