It’s been more than a minute since I last posted – in fact, it’s been about six weeks! It was easier to find topics of interest when we were on the road full-time. New surroundings, projects galore to keep everything functional on the RV – always something to talk about. Not that life here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort is boring – there’s always something going on. But it gets redundant to post about daily life without fresh topics.

This week we had Valentines Day. I don’t get charged up about Hallmark holidays. Maybe I’m just not a romantic type, but I really don’t get it. When we lived in Michigan they also celebrated something called “Sweetest Day.” I think it’s common in the Midwest. To me, it’s another Hallmark holiday made up to sell cards and candies. Bah humbug!

Last year after I started my deep dive into astrophotography, I imaged the Rosette Nebula. I counted it as one of my more successful attempts. I only had 71 minutes of data and the image was quite noisy. I knew I could improve it, but didn’t have a chance to capture it again until this week. I went out on Tuesday and Wednesday night and set up at the East tennis court parking lot.

Tuesday night things went well – until they didn’t. After about 40 one-minute exposures, I had a data transfer failure from the ZWO ASI533 MC Pro camera to the NINA software on my laptop. After a few frantic moments of troubleshooting, I disconnected the camera and restarted it. I was up and running again. It seems I always have moment of drama when I’m imaging the night sky. Things ran smoothly after that. The quality of the exposures seemed good.

Wednesday night was the smoothest session I’ve ever experienced. Everything worked as it should, the mount tracked flawlessly and quality of my captures was better than ever. Altogether over the two sessions I had 221 one-minute exposures. During processing of these sub-exposures, I culled eight substandard captures, leaving 213. That’s a 96% keeper rate. Outstanding! I’ve also improved my image processing. Once I stacked the 213 sub-exposures and made corrections, the final image was very satisfying. The improvement over my early effort 11 months ago is pretty dramatic in my opinion.

The total integration time of three hours and 33 minutes reduced the background noise and also improved the detail and color of the nebula. Here is the latest image.

This is what I came up with 11 months ago.

These images were shot with the same camera, filter and software. The telescope in the old photo was a William Optics Zenithstar 73 – a fine doublet telescope. I replaced the Z73 with a William Optics Gran Turismo 71 and used a 0.8X reducer. The GT71 is a triplet and an upgrade over the Z73, but I think that had little to do with the overall results. I also used the Losmandy GM 811G mount vs the Skywatcher HEQ5 I used to have. The stars are tighter in the latest photo – that may be due to me focusing more carefully than when I first started. The background is much smoother – it doesn’t have the gritty noise of the earlier photo. This is mostly due to the longer integration time – three and half hours vs 71 minutes. The other wildcard is atmospheric conditions – I have no control over that other than to pass on nights when conditions are really poor.

Donna is off to band rehearsal this morning. The Viewpoint Concert Band has a performance scheduled for tomorrow night. This will be the third of four concerts scheduled this season. Donna is the president of the Viewpoint Concert Band board of directors. She’s also the secretary of the Viewpoint Tennis Club and she’s the founder and heads up the Viewpoint Good Neighbors program. In her spare time, she golfs in the ladies golf league and tries to get on the golf course a couple of times per week. To say she’s always on the run is an understatement.

I almost forgot about another nebula image I captured at the end of January. This is the Heart Nebula captured with my GT71 and Player One Poseidon C-Pro camera. This was captured with 104 90-second sub-exposures for a total time of two hours and 34 minutes. The atmosperic conditions were less than favorable with the moon at 84% illumination.

Donna just pointed out that while I am not a fan of Hallmark holidays, I did choose appropriate targets for Valentine’s Day – a rosette and a heart!

After a wet and relatively cold start to February, we have great weather forecast to continue through the end of the month. Today we should hit the mid-70s and the thermometer will top out there daily with mostly sunny skies. Can’t complain about that! Donna will miss some of our good weather to go to equally good weather in Florida. She’s meeting two sisters and a cousin and they’re doing a half marathon in Key West, Florida next weekend.

Edit: If you click on the Rosette Nebula photos, they will open in a new pane. Then click on the photo again and it will expand. This will allow you to easily see the quality differences I mention.