Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  M 108  ·  NGC 3556
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M108 1hr 51 min exposure with OMC300 at FL 2967mm, Rick Evans
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M108 1hr 51 min exposure with OMC300 at FL 2967mm

Revision title: M108 reprocessed

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M108 1hr 51 min exposure with OMC300 at FL 2967mm, Rick Evans
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M108 1hr 51 min exposure with OMC300 at FL 2967mm

Revision title: M108 reprocessed

Equipment

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Description

Posted Today, 10:26 AMLast night was mostly clear, but high thin clouds passed over from time to time.  M108 is getting a bit low in the sky and I thought this might be my last good chance to image it. Even though the moon was quite bright, it wasn't near Ursa Major.  I used my OMC300 f9 Klevtsov variant of a Maksutov Cassegrain that I bought new from Orion Optics in the UK about 2009.  It isn't made any longer but there are smaller versions that are.   To image M108 I chose not to use a focal reducer, and a specific one was never made for this scope which I think was considered mainly for lunar/planetary work.  The OMC300 is on my G11 Galaxy 1 mount.  My guide scope is not adequate for work at focal lengths greater than 1500mm and my setup last night had a focal length of 2967mm. So I only used it, connected to PHD2 and APT for dithering.  I don't have a specific OAG for this scope so my decision was not to guide at all, just to track.   Even though the Losmandy is a good tracking mount, exposures had to be limited to 15 seconds to avoid mis-shapen stars.  Every 30 exposures I took a minute to re-center M108 using APT's Point Craft feature.  I collected 481 subs of 15 sec each.  A small percentage showed mis-shapen stars and some were affected by clouds.  I was able to stack 446 subs in Sirl.  I did not bother with flats, darks, or biases.  My camera was a ZWO ASI6200MC and I used it binned 4x4 for about 1.15 arc sec/pixel resolution which I thought was appropriate to local seeing conditions.

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  • M108 1hr 51 min exposure with OMC300 at FL 2967mm, Rick Evans
    Original
  • Final
    M108 1hr 51 min exposure with OMC300 at FL 2967mm, Rick Evans
    B

B

Title: M108 reprocessed

Description: Reprocessing using Photometric calibration in Sirl.

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M108 1hr 51 min exposure with OMC300 at FL 2967mm, Rick Evans