By Chuck’s Astrophotography
2016.10.9
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This is M76 – the Little Dumbbell. It’s my third attempt at imaging with the ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool Mono camera. It still came out very grainy, no matter how much I lowered the gain and offset. But I did notice that I was not properly setting the cooling on the camera. If the camera is not cooled, it can produce a lot of noise. So that will be my next fix. I captured 10 raw images for the luminance filter, and 5 each for the red, green, and blue filters. Each exposure was 180 seconds. The total exposure time after stacking was just over 75 minutes. 10 dark, 10 bias, and 10 flat frames were also created (the flats were created for each filter). Here is more information below:
OTA: Celestron NexStar 8SE
Mount: Celestron Advanced VX (AVX)
Guiding telescope: Orion ShortTube 80 (ST80)
Guiding camera: LodeStar X2
Guiding software: PHD2
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI 1600MM-Cool Mono (with LRBG and light pollution filters)
Image capture software: Nebulosity
Post-processing: PixInsight, Photoshop