Last night I took a gamble and got thirty 60-second subs of Collinder 399 with the 80mm Astro-Tech EDT apochromatic refractor, ZWO1600MC color camera and a Skywatcher EQ6R-Pro mount despite the nearly fully moon and constantly passing clouds. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have bothered, but I have an Optolong L-Pro light pollution filter I wanted to try out on anything accessible from my driveway. Originally that was to be the region around Antares but clouds forced me to choose another object suited to the 2 X2.6-degree field of view the camera offers through the refractor. I picked the Coat Hangar because it's bright and large enough to fit well in the FOV. It was a real effort to get the thirty 60-second subs that were stacked to yield this image, which turned out better than I expected after processing the subs with GraxPert, ZWO Studio and SIRIL. It seems an L-Pro does work well, at least on broad band objects from a city. Post processing was carried out in Photoshop. I really want to devote at least several hours to Collinder 399 with the 1600MC camera, and other large objects in the Summer Milky Way such as M-24 that are far better suited to a camera with a larger sensor than a ZWO 533MM or MC. Hopefully better skies will be ahead soon. Right now, they're horrible here in Mobile.
Taras
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Edited by Achernar, 14 June 2025 - 02:33 PM.
