From: "milton_aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: August 29, 2009 2:43:48 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: New M52 and M13 Image

Hi Folks;

I was on vacation for the past 2 weeks. The sky finally cleared off so that I could do some imaging in the last 3 days before I drove back.  After solving an issue with my mount (RA gear binding), I managed to capture NGC6946, M33, M13 (luma only due to trees) and M52. I'm just starting to process what I captured.

Turbulence was exceedingly low and my skies were very dark, so I was reaching Mag 24 to 25 stars with 15 minute exposures on the C8.

Here is M52 (scaled to 90%):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/DSO/M52LRGB_20090826_MJA.jpg 

It's taken with the C8 @ 1149 mm FL (F6.3x Focal Reducer) six 10 minute Luma, 11 minute red 8 minute each green and blue with AstroDon E series. Guiding was done with a GPUSB to the HEQ5 mount with an Celestron OAG and a Flea 640x480 color camera on a Mag 8.2 guide star with 1 second exposures.

Here is M13 (Luma only scaled to 90%) with seven 10 minute luma frames.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/DSO/M13L_20090826_MJA.jpg 

I used a Mag 7 guide star for it with the OAG.

All stacking, image processing was done in Astro IIDC.

The soft haloes and faint trails on the right side of both images are due to condensation on the cooled (-5°C) CCD, as humidity was 75 to 85% that night. I had the tube wrapped in a heating pad (poor man's dew heater) set to low to keep the optics from fogging over. It worked really well and did not cause any perceptible tube turbulence issues at all, at least not detectable at 1100 mm focal lengths.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle