Trifid Nebula, 2024-06-06, ZWO ASI2600MC Pro, 5x180s. Celestron 8SE, ZWO AM5 mount, f/6.3 reducer. Live Stacked with SharpCap. Final stack with ASTAP. Prineville Reservoir State Park.
The weather on Wednesday and Thursday nights was perfect. In spite of a report showing wind gusts, there was little to no wind. Setup took me a while each night. But after getting my darks and flats the first night, I used those again on the next. PHD2 calibration using the wizard was almost perfect. Had to calibrate 2 times each night before locking it into a good calibration. But honestly, it was worth it for the tracking. I chose one target for Thursday night. Tracked it for roughly 4 hours with PHD2. And if I'm reading my log correctly, the RMS total was 0.77 for that time. Wednesday, I saw anywhere from 0.60 total RMS to 1.23 RMS (which might be due to losing stars because of a tree).
I've wanted to capture the Trifid Nebula for a while now. I think it was ok to get 5 good exposures. SharpCap just could not live stack. So I opted to save the raw frames and stack them later. In retrospect, I should have just let SharpCap continue to drop frames to get more raw frames.
Oh, and my other target of the Filamentary Nebula had not 1, not 2, but 3 (three) satellites crossing. *grrrr*. Otherwise, had a lot of fun!