Flame and Horse Head!

The best thing, about severe cold weather coming in... is the clear skies at night, before the snow hits!

So I jumped at the chance to get in the garden early, setup everything and shoot as soon as it was dark enough.
As per usual, issues happen.  When doing test shots, I noticed the collimation is STILL out. :(
I really need to figure out collimation, as according to my Cheshire, its all collimated ok.
Ahh well, thats for another night.

I finally started shooting at the Flame and Horsehead nebula around 7:30pm, which was around the time of full sunset and darkness anyway, so no loss.  I was aiming for around 30x 300s exposures to start with, then swap camera battery and try for another 1.5 hours after that.
Unfortunately, 40 minutes in when I wasnt near the Laptop, Microsoft thought it would be wonderful to install a new major Windows 10 update!
This force restarted the Laptop, and lost me all my tracking, and all settings I'd been using!
Damn you!
So, I only managed 40 mins of data.

I also used my DGM Optics NPB filter for the first time too. I believe that its aimed more for Visual work with Nebula but as the moon was out and bright, I gave it a go, seeing if it reduced moonlight and helped the Nebula's pop out. I think it did ok!!

So, today I thoughts I'd process the data I had and HOPE I managed to get some sort of image.
I'm pleasantly surprised with the result, I was expecting a lot worse!
I managed to take some much better flats this time, so the viginetting was almost gone, and I dragged the data out as much as I could so the Horse was visible.
I'm sure there are a million photos out there much better than this... but, Boo to them.

I took this one! :)

8x 300s Lights
25x Flats, Darks, Bias
Processed in Photoshop CC

(Click To Enlarge)

So... now the moon is becoming more of a pain, I'm going to find a star... and collimage the damn scope, properly!  (Or try)

Finally, a Dark Sky!

 January, was a pathetic month for dark skies.  The weather was simply aweful all month.
I think I managed two nights out, in total!  And one was a full moon, so managed no Deep Sky Photos!

Anyway, its now halfway through February and I finally had a dark sky, bonus points, no Moon either!!

So I spend about 4 hours out in the garden, shooting a new target.
I choose the M33 galaxy, Triangulum.

Not the easiest of targets, especially with a DSLR and not being in a 'Dark Sky Area'
But I gave it a go.

Two hours of data, 24 5 minute frames. All of them turned out perfect too!  Bonus.

I then spent a few days processing the data, and discovered that the Flat files I took, must have been bad. As there is a shocking imbalance I noticed during processing. :(

So, I had to crop... burn... and butcher the image best I could to produce an image I can be at least a little happy with.

Here is the results!

Click to Enlarge

Lights - 24 x 300s
Darks, Flat and Bias x25