Photographic wanderings

• French

September 2010, 3rd – Haute-Savoie (France)
Two following new Moon periods when I could practice astrophotography during a weekend ? That’s unbelievable ! That couldn’t be true. But, that was.

This Friday was beautiful, the following Saturday, well, is not so good : light clouds are already covering the Alps this early evening and it’s forecasts to be lasting until Sunday morning 8 AM ! That’s Murphy’s law !

I am on site at 8 Pm and begin to install my equipment …. But what ? Around 9:30 PM, some clouds come to cover the whole sky! Meteoblue, MeteoConsult, météofrance website would they cheated by having forecasted a clear night?

Fortunately, around 10:15 PM, the stars came back and I could finish all the settings … I have started my shots at about 11:00 PM . I chose NGC7000 in the same field with the Pelican and SH2-119 … I told myself with shots during 3 hours (the moon rising at 2 AM) I will draw something very interesting!

After launching the shots and seeing that it went well, I slipped into my sleeping bag (I was tired anyway) … Around midnight, I wake up thinking I heard a beep … I look at the sky, always clear and seeing nothing … I fall asleep again.

Big mistake! 2 hours later, I got up to stop the acquisitions, the moon had risen … And then I discovered that the guiding has stopped ! So that was the beep!

Strangely, I was not upset because of not going to see around midnight when I heard this beep … Finally, it is by making mistakes that we learn the best …

Of the 36 pictures taken, only 11 were good (actually 8 of them are good and 3… acceptable). Even in his sleep a bit, I must find a way to monitor a little the progress of the shooting.

I still processed the picture I found not too bad, staying on a display screen (the high definition is terrible. … It still lacks the signal: that’s expected)

Next year, I will capture this field again because I find it aesthetically nice.

Une petite légende : 

For the high definition version (even it’s awful, click HERE.

Technical information :

• Object(s) : NGC7000 (North America), IC5068 et IC5070 (Le Pélican), Sh2-119, B152, B153, B355
• Constellation : Cygnus (Cyg)
• Place : Ajon (Bogève – Haute-Savoie)
• Numerical device : Canon EOS 350D (Baader) – ISO 200
• Lens Canon 70-200 2.8L (set at 160 mm and f/3.5)
• Numer of shots : 11
• Unit exposure : 5 min (Total exposure = 55 min)
• Number of darks : 15
• Number of flats : 5 (at 1/60s)
• Number of offset : 15
• Autoguiding with
  • William Optics Zenithstar 66 SD and LVI Smartguider
  • Mounting Losmandy G11 with Gemini + Geoptik dual Vixen / EQ saddle plate
• Pre-processing with DeepSkyStacker
• Processing with PixInsight LE 1.0 & Adobe Photoshop CS5

October 2010, 15th update
I realized that I completely failed the pre-processing … One of the settings was wrong. Here, therefore, a new version that seems to me a little better …

For the new high defintion version (a little better), click HERE.

Share on Facebook