It has been a good while since the last time I was able to capture any far off photons with the SV503. I broke the scope down and stored it away in the Astro Shed just before we went down to Ocracoke back in August. I set it back up just before Christmas but between the clouds, bright Moons, time with the grandkids, being worn out after work, and such I have not had the opportunity to capture light with my primary rig (couple of great nights with the SeeStar though)… until last night.

The goal of the evening was to refamiliarize myself with the gear and software. Also just make sure everything was working well. I cabled everything up earlier in the day and just did a quick connectivity check in NINA, all the gear connected as expected. Then I shot some much needed dark frames… this were much needed for a few reasons: it had been over a year since shooting the last ones, I was planning to shoot bin 1 (which is not something I normally do), and I was going to do shorter exposers (60 seconds) which I did not have any darks for in my library. So I capture 30 x 60 second darks.

After dark I ran the autofocus and then a polar alignment. I used the Three-Point Polar Alignment Routine in NINA and dialed it in to ~0.0.54″ of total error. I usually try to get it a bit better than that, but it was already good and dark and I really just wanted to capture some kind of light. I decided to keep it simple and set up M42 as the target.

Primary (Imaging)	Secondary (Guiding)
Scope: SVBONY SV503 102ED Reducer/Flattener: 0.8 Focal Reducer/Flattener (~570mm – F/5.6) Filter: None Camera: ZWO ASI294 MC Pro, Cooled to -5 C Focuser: ZWO EAF Mount: Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro	Scope: SVBONY SV165 30mm F/4 Guide Scope Camera: Orion Star Shooter Autoguider (OSSAG)
Telescope Control, Image Acquisition, and Image Processing Software
Equipment Control and Imaging Software: NINA/PHD2/ASCOM on a Mini-PC Processing Software: Siril’s Interactive Companion (Sirilic), GraXpert, StarNet, PixInsight

I used NINA’s framing assistant to frame up M42, the Orion Nebula, and friends then added it to a sequence to capture 130 x 60 second exposures of M42, 121 gain, offset 30, bin 1, dithering after every 5 exposures.

M42, the Orion Nebula, is a diffused nebula in the constellation of Orion. It is part of Orion’s sword and is located about 1300 light years away. The nebula is very bright and can even be seen without a telescope on a good dark night. After stacking and some processing of 130 x 60 second exposures here is what I came up with:

Definitely very bright and the center is blown out… but there is some interesting details that seem to pop out of the clouds as you move out from the bright center. I think I might try this again with 30 second exposures.

Got a tip in discord on using HDRmultitransform on the nebula to get more detail and reduce the brightness… and it worked great!!!

It was just good to gather a bit of light. Gear worked great, I do need to spend a bit more time on get the polar alignment dialed in. Looking forward to the next clear night… hopefully it will come soon. Clear skies…

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