Ad Astra Observatory

Like M42 is a “tester” object for winter, M81 is a tester object for the spring. It’s big and bright and there’s lots of detail to bring up. In addition, if well-framed, M82 is often an added bonus on the outskirts of a large FOV.

Both of these two images are from the same dataset.

This one includes darks, flats, and bias frames (in addition to the lights).

This one is just darks.

I’m still working out the new workflow that involves FITS images and all these extra non-astronomy frames I have to shoot. Also, I find that my processing skills are delightfully random between nights, even on the same data. shrug.