A couple of nights ago the late evening sky where I live in
central western New South Wales Australia offered up an
exceptionally clear and steady night, something that
only comes around once or twice a year...if that.
The stars seemed brighter than usual with just a hint of a
twinkle from them every now and then.
I took full advantage of the situation and opened up the
observatory for what I thought would be a night of calm and
relaxed imaging.
Needless to say, when you think you have the entire night
ahead of you the whole scenario can change and change it did.
Within an hour slight breezes manifested themselves which soon
became stronger, thereby degrading the incoming photons.
As you would expect the seeing suffered as well, so after muttering
a few expletives that one shouldn't mutter, I called it a night.
Attached is the result, the Tarantula Nebula located in the
Large Magellanic Cloud, and which is a stunning object when
visually observing with a moderate size telescope.
The image was taken through an 80mm refractor and an uncooled
ASI224 camera (a great workhorse) and utilizing Sharpcap Software.
Gain was set to 160, with 20 exposures taken at 30 seconds each.
Images were stacked within Sharpcap's Folder Monitor Camera, with
minimal processing done in Seti Astro Pro Suite.
Hopefully the next such still and clear night will be longer lasting.
Cheers and all the best.
George.
