I know it’s been too quiet around here. I’ve been fiddling with planet imaging (’tis the season, after all!) but my downtown location has never permitted me to do well and things haven’t changed. Lots of wasted sessions. Now Jupiter is behind the house and Mars is in the trees so it’s just Saturn and I don’t feel much like beating that dead horse so I’m done for the season. Last night I pulled the Neximage5 and stuck the QSI back on the Meade. I spent some time dealing with various issues that had crept in during the inactive period. FocusMax hasn’t worked for a long time and I dug around and found the settings that had gotten corrupted so that works now (this is probably the first decently focused image this year). Goofed around with the focuser tilt and got that a little better, too. Opened the camera up and removed some dust from the L filter.
By then it was getting late so I decided to grab an easy target. I have to say that I’m glad, as this is the best M13 I’ve shot. Like many of us, I’ve gone for it dozens of times because it’s such a good test target; doesn’t require all that much exposure time and has stars everywhere. The image posted here is the result of a very quick processing session performed before I went to bed. I’ll tune up the larger version in the following link later so that one should improve.
40 minutes L unbinned, 10 minutes each R,G,B binned 2X2
L exposures were eight of 5 minutes each, RGB were each five 2 minute exposures. All were Starlock guided. Image scale unbinned is about .4 arcseconds/pixel.
QSI683WSG-8 on Meade 12″ F/8 ACF/LX850 mount
http://www.cloudynights.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=29799&size=big