Deep Sky NGC2244 Rosette Nebula

[OhNo]

First off I have an admission to make. I live on a rural farm in Western Canada with Bortle 2 (verging on Bortle 1) sky. I have a small observatory that is mostly run remotely out in my yard. I have been doing AP for about 7 years, and almost have a few things figured out. My AP growth has been slow, painful and expensive. The advances in gear and software have jumped in leaps and bounds the last few years. However my budge has been limited.

A lot of my gear has been bought used. I purchased a used CGEM and found the nerve to hyper-tune it. All my scopes except the newest one were used. I started out using a T3 (1100D) Canon I bought for 50 bucks (Canuck Bucks). SInce the start I have graduated to scopes more AP friendly. I currently alter between a 8" SkyWatcher Quattro (Imaging Newtonian) and a little SharpStar 61 EDPH II APO. I alter between a afforsbale ZWOASI533MC Pro and a ZWO ASI183MM Pro for cameras. As you can see my gear isn't exactly top shelf.

I had run the gambit of Capture/Control software too. APT, Sequence Generator Pro, NINA, SharpCap and finally StellarMate. Same with processing software, but finally settled on Astro Pixel Processor for stacking my OSC data and PixInSIght. The thing I try to do is get the best I can out of the gear, software and limited talent I have.

My sky offers a lot of concessions in that earthbound LP isn't a issue here. Acquisition of data is relatively easy except for the stuff everyone deals with when Momma Nature is callin' the shots.

Here is a image I took last December. Done in SHO with Optolong NB filters. Limited data only 4x300sec images through the SharpStar Scope and the ASI183MM Pro. Not my best work, but I never post my best stuff on Flickr, I've had people steal images and make metal prints and sell 'em. DIdn't know if I should be mad or happy! LOL

NGC2244 4 Dec12 by Brent Secord, on Flickr

 

[Tracy]

That's still a fantastic image.

Where I live we are in a Bortle 5 area... but I can drive about 30 minutes out to my brothers farm and be in a Bortle 3 location... only thing is, I have to keep a section of the pasture mowed down short there in the spring and fall and then watch for the hog hunters at night in the winter. That's why most of my stuff will be done down there on week nights (being retired is nice) and leave the weekends open for he and his friends deer hunting during the day and hog hunting at night.

As is par for the course, since I've gotten the cameras (about 2 weeks ago) we've had exactly two nights that didn't have moderate to heavy cloud cover... and one of those nights the dew point was such that after about midnight any solid object that was sitting still for more than 15 minutes looked like it had been subjected to a light rain.

I've got one Raspberry Pi loaded with StellarMate OS right now. It's the 4GB one. I've got an 8GB Pi coming in within the next few days and will be moving StellarMate over to it and putting Astroberry on the 4GB (so I can play/compare them). StellarMate will be used primarily for my William Optics ZenithStar 103mm that will have an ASI533MM w filter wheel attached to it (EQ35M William Optics branded mount/tripod).