The weather of late has been particularly terrible. A big high pressure anchored over Scandinavia has left a big pool of cold wet air sitting over the UK - yup, its anticyclonic gloom. So I have revisited some frames of the HorseHead area I took on the one clear night I have had recently. I'd initially discarded these frames as "not great" and "not enough", but considering the drought of clear nights, I've decided to present them. The image is something of an improvement on last year, if only because of the superior field of view of the Artemis camera over the SC3 camera. I used the Astronomic CLS filter to give me more contrast against the light pollution on this dim object. Perhaps next to I will rotate the camera 90 degrees to get a bit more stuff in.
Both frames were effected by cloud, so contrast suffered. Also both frames had annoy jumps in the guiding, especially the first frame.
Captured in Artemis Capture. This image was captured in 2x2 binned mode for extra sensitivity (and half the size!) Stacked in registax. Curves in photoshop. Due to ice problems the peltier was not running, which would not have helped matters. It certainly added a good number of hot pixels!
I suppose I was lucky to get anything as the clouds rolled in - not a patch on Merope and friends
Exposure Details :
Astronomik CLS 2x300s on 200mm @ F5 with ART285
Curdridge Observatory, Southampton,UK