Jan 7

Fly- and Spider Nebula

Yesterday I took the chance to shot the Fly- and Spider Nebula and some cluster neighbors, but had to stop after 1.5 hours due to clouds (in contrary to the weather forecast). Additional I had a forced 15 minutes break: my GEM28 had again a crash/freeze. I had to reset everything: back to zero position […]

Nov 8

NGC 1499 California Nebula

Finally a fog-free night… After tighten the DEC axis stiction a little bit (I loosened it too much), my GEM28 shows again very well performance, constantly. So, for the moment I’ll keep the belt tension as it is. And no crash or freeze during the whole session 🙂 But I’m almost sure it will crash […]

Oct 11

M 45 Pleiades

After around 90 minutes shooting M 34, the Pleiades came in sight (M 34 slowly disappeared behind the roof anyway). So I decided to switch to the Pleiades at the same settings. This way I can use the same flats and darks for both targets. Lesson learned: take flats directly after every target! Dust or […]

Oct 1

IC 1805 Heart Nebula

New equipment and clear sky! What more do you want? 😉 After a few MGEN recordings I targeted IC1805 Heart Nebula to start a session. This time I could use every sub exposure. No DEC trails anymore. I’m so happy. During the whole session I used the 22Ah power tank to power the GEM28 again, […]

Sep 5

Sh2-132 Lion Nebula

The Lion Nebula is much more faint than I thought. So I spent the last 2 nights for it. It’s a very star rich region. More than 4 hours integration. Each session is calibrated for it’s own, then registered and integrated all at once. Details Shooting impression:

Sep 3

IC1848 Soul Nebula

Finally again clear skies 🙂 This time only 4 out of 79 lights were unusable due to slight DEC trails… still searching for the ideal MGEN settings. Details

Aug 15

NGC 7822

After my polar scope disaster and recovery I captured NGC 7822 last night to check if everything works fine again. It was a very warm night. More than 20°C even at the end of the session… ​​​​​​​Drizzled 2x and resized to original resolution. Details

Aug 14

Caldwell 9 – Cave Nebula

Still not happy with DEC performance, but at least I can setup the mount in the darkness without light now 🙂 This image contains only 75% of the lights… On the other 25% there are clouds or DEC error 🙁 Details

Aug 12

Bubble Nebula Wide Field

Again testing the gear mesh adjustment… and I’m still not done 🙁 So far I adjusted the gear meshing 4 times in the range of 1/8 turn counter clockwise and 1/8 turn clockwise, since the manual says not more than 1/4 turn in total. I contacted iOptron again regarding this issue and they told me […]

Aug 11

NGC281 Pacman Nebula

I still looking for the ideal adjustment for gear meshing… this time around 15% useless subs. The other subs resulted in this image: Details