November 9, 2010. The moon has set and, with DST over but no snow cover yet, it is surprisingly dark in my back yard. It’s clear and not too cold – about 5 degrees.

Gathered 2 more hours of data on M27, this time in 15-minute subs. I’ve bumped this up from 10-minute subs just to see the effect. I would expect slightly deeper results, and slightly better S/N, than with more shorter subs. On the other hand, the longer the exposures, the greater the chance that something like a passing plane will ruin them. So I’ll try 15 and see how that works, and maybe push even longer for the next run.

Watching the guiding graph, I note that RA guiding is still tending to oscillate back-and-forth across the zero axis, so I have tried turning the x-aggressiveness down a bit, to 60%, to see if it can further smooth out the curve. Watching the results for a couple of minutes, it does seem to have resulted in a flatter error curve.

While the data collection was running, I took a look at the G2V calibration images I collected the other night. On first approximation, the balance figures seem to be RGB 90-100-116. I’ll try that the next time I do a de-Bayer.

Following 2 hours of m27 data collection, I did a quick snap of M15, to experiment with exposure levels suitable to leave detail in the core, . . .

and an hour of M1, the Crab Nebula, just rising low in the East (and viewed through poor seeing from neighbour’s chimneys).