Obviously a fantastic part of the sky, imaged by many! I really wanted to get a lot of data of this region now that the observatory was up and running. After a few attempts, I realized that my stars were rather oblong during long exposure imaging. Couldn't really figure it out, so I hit the proverbial reset button: realigned the mount, rebalanced the mount with photographic equipment attached, re-installed new guiding software (PHD2), and started from scratch. Immediately saw better results with easier guiding (software could easily pick up guide stars) and could now get nice round stars. Also paid attention to focusing!
Anyway, the image below is a nice result!
Image Details:
- Imaging Scope: AstroTelescopes 80mm ED Refractor
- Imaging Camera: Nikon D7000
- Guiding Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor
- Guiding Camera: Orion Starshoot Autoguider
- Light Frames: 20*5 minutes @ ISO1250 for the overall region, 20*1 minutes @ ISO1250 for the core
- Bias Frames: 20
- Dark Frames: 10
- Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
- Merged in Dynamic Photo-HDR
- Tweaked in Adobe Lightroom
