The Leo Triplet (Rob)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Leo (Leo) · Contains: IC 2763 · M 65 · M 66 · NGC 3623 · NGC 3627 · NGC 3628

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The Leo Triplet

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The Leo Triplet

I had been using my Newtonian telescope on my GEM45 with the focuser aimed up. The center of gravity in this configuration is too much for my GEM28 to handle, so I tried using it with the focuser aimed down. However, I had to have the OTA quite forward on the saddle so the filter wheel didn't hit the mount. This left me with 17lbs of load that was unbalanced on the DEC axis on my GEM28. I tried to guide, but it just wasn't having it. Instead of big braining it and trying to add some weights to the back of the dovetail (which I have), I rolled with the lazy and just tracked the target all night. This is why there are 1620x15s subs. 😅 I don't believe I'll be trying this configuration again. If I were to somehow balance it with 3lbs of weight on the back, that's 19lbs on my GEM28, really not sure it'll perform well at all like that.

The stars aren't ideal and there's obviously quite a bit of walking noise due to not dithering. I really desaturated the background and flattened it's curve close to clipping it in order to hide most of it. All in all, it was quite an exercise in "things I don't want to do again."

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Description: I lowered the contrast on the stars and they don't look quite as terrible as they did before.

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Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	9335088
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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