NGC 4438 / M106

 03/20/2024 -- Clear skies but enormous moon.  Switched to the venerable Orion ST80 singlet with the dual narrow-band filter in hopes of getting collection against emission nebula.  This was not to be... but was able to set up the OTA, get it into focus with the SV405cc (in preparation for the 04/08 eclipse) to include the finder and grab some light frames for a quality check.  Ended up collecting frames over a range of (too small) and highly inappropriate targets (for this OTA/filter combination) centered on NGC 4438 with M87 and M88 in the field of view.

Indi Allsky camera pseudo sky quality metric for 03/20 - 21 showing poor values (15k where 5k is good).

Indi Allsky star counts for 03/20 -21.

Forecast from meteoblue for 03/20-21 with giant moon.

Forecast from cleardarksky showing anything but for this evening.

Started collecting 120s light frames at a gain of 120 with offset 5...but moved to 180s after examining the first few light frames in ASTAP and they appeared dark. Upwards of 44 light frames were ultimately collected overnight.

03/21/24 -- second evening of collection...first against M106 and then later (starting at 1am) on NGC 4438. In the AM, collected flats and flat darks. Used a cutting board and morning sun to provide uniform, diffuse light.

Indi allsky camera pseudo sky quality for 03/21-22.

Indi allsky camera star count for 03/21-22

Forecast for 03/21-22 by meteoblue.

For M106, 58x120s light frames were collected.  Subsequently collected 30x120s dark frames with gain 120 and offset of 5 for use with this collection.  Used AstroPixelProcessor 2.0beta to integrate these with the flats, dark flats and light frames (using a 2x bin factor). Struggled to see much for M106 after correcting and suppressing the background.  Astrometry results found here showing 4.79 arcsec/pixel.

AstroPixelProcessor analytic results per light frame for 58x120s light frames collected on 03/21-22.

APP results from 58x120s frames collected on 03/21-22.