M33 -- Triangulum Galaxy & the Sun

10/29/2022 - Target -- M33 -- The Triangulum Galaxy.

Clear skies, no moon, no wind -- excellent night for observations. 


Indi Allsky Charts for 20:30-24:31 on 10/29-10/30.


Started setting up before sundown. Configured the LX10 with the Meade 0.63x focal reducer and inserted the Astronomik CLS filter in the Canon T3I.  Initial polar alignment error (dead reckoning) 327'.  Ended up ~-4.5'.  Ultimately ~94x3 minute frames were collected.  On 10/30, placed white tissue paper over the OTA with it pointed to zenith, placed the Canon T3I to aperture priority & measured correct exposure. Dialed this into manual mode and collected 25 flat frames for use in calibration.  Later in the afternoon, collected a range of photos of the sun with solar film in place. Sadly, didn't notice at the time the opportunity to use several sun spots to update focusing (set the previous night in cold conditions).

A single 180s frame with some background suppression processing and star color calibration applied in APP.

Sun captured at ~1:30pm Eastern on 10/30 at ISO100 (1/80sec) with the Canon T3I (10 second shutter delay, triggered manually) through solar film the Meade LX10 with  Celestron 0.63x focal reducer (1250mm @ F6.3). 

Final result for M33 after processing in AstroPixeProcessor (17000 total seconds of integration) show poor agreement with the flats.  Significant vignetting remained suggesting a poor match with the flats.
M33 Triangulum Galaxy (17100 seconds integration)
M33 Triangulum Galaxy processed with 95 x 180s lights, 25 x 180s darks, 25 x 1/400 dark flats, 25 x 1/4000 bias frames (17100s total integration).

11/23/22 -- Additional night of M33 collection:
Started setting up around 5:30pm with warmer weather (50's), clear skies predicted until 3-4am and little to no wind and no moon.  Initial polar alignment (post-meridian flip) was ~430'.  Iterated with PHD2 drift alignment to ~3.7' RMS.  Ran Kstars/Indi/Ekos on the black HP laptop with the main server off line for Fedora 37 update & raid resync.  After double checking balance for the OTA on the mount and focus, started collection at ~8:13pm with 180s collections at ISO1600 on the Canon T3I.  79 frames for M33 were collected before it moved out of view.  An additional 53 frames for NGC 2841 were then collected.  Used tissue paper with the OTA pointed to zenith the next morning for flats and then covered the OTA and pointed to the house to collect dark flats.
Predicted conditions from cleardarkskies site at around 9pm on 11/23.

Meteoblue prediction for 11/23/22 from ~9pm showing clear skies until upper level clouds begin to move in at 2am.

Indi allsky camera analysis for 11/23/22 at around 9pm showing excellent conditions.

NGC 2841 captured on 11/23/2022 from the backyard with 53x180s exposures.


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