Ad Astra Observatory

When I got home today, I tried to process the stack that MaxIM had created of my M81 shot from last night. That didn’t go well.

So I re-stacked the subframes in DeepSkyStacker, and I’m more pleased with the results. I could probably stand to work my processing mojo some more.

Here it is.
M81, Bode’s Galaxy in Ursa Major, 30x10m subframes in Ha.

This is a center crop.

Springtime is tough for me. The local skyglow limits me to 5m subframes. In order to go “deeper”, I need to shoot through a narrowband filter. The springtime targets, galaxies, generally do not respond well to narrowband.

But, when I do shoot narrowband, I can shoot each subframe as much as I want, and the longer the better.

Last night, I was having trouble with 20m subframes, so I went back to 10m.

It occurs to me that the moon is nearly full, but for last night, 10m was too short for Ha on a galaxy. It’s still twice as long of a subframe as I could do if I was shooting broadband, however.

It’s a catch-22. But I think that really the way out of it is to restrict my subframes to 5m, broadband, and just take what I can get. It’s probably worth shooting with the C9.25, too. Once the saddle comes, I’ll mount up the long scope and start seeing how the mount can do on the springtime sky.