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Taken 13-Nov-15
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Barnard 3 in Perseus

This field shows dark nebula Barnard 3 (B 3) just to the left and above image center, with LDN 1468 just below. The haze in the background is due to LBN 749 which is too big to fit into the field of view. There are also at least two background galaxies in this image.

A lot more work than usual went into this image. Read below if you care.
Technical details:
Date: Nov 12, 2015
Time: 8:45 am - 0:30 am
Camera: SBIG STF-8300M
CCD Temperature: -10 C
Optics: Televue 127is (native)
Filter: AstroDon L
Light frames: 23x8 min
Dark frames: 25
Flat frames: 25
Flat darks: 25
Binning: 1x1
Guiding: Orion SSAG @ Orion finder (~162 mm)
Mount: AP Mach 1
Dithering: Manual
Processing: Stacking and gentle deconvolution in CCDStack, Curves, Levels and noise reduction in PSCS6.

Other notes:
Without a doubt the most frustrating session is a long while. Minor things typically inconvenience me to some degree in each session, but this one almost defeated me ... only 1.5 hours in, and still 6 hours of shooting left, I considered tossing everything on the ground and just running it over with my car. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.
It's technically winter. The air is cool and dry, and it is very easy to build up an electrostatic charge. No big deal, I just watch what I touch, so I don't destroy my gear. Except I forgot to discharge myself on my car and I get an electric shock of historic proportions from my laptop. Windows thinks about this for a while while my PC screen looks frozen for 5 seconds, but it recovers and everything looks normal. Except it isn't. The autoguider is suddenly reading zero tracking errors, and I know that is bullshit. I stop/start the guider - nothing. I change the exposure time - no change. It looks like the image from the autoguider is frozen on the screen, while everything else is moving along just fine. I ended up having to unplug/replug the autoguider and restart the software to get it running again, but this took ~5 minutes away from my exposures because the autoguider has to do another calibration.
Fine!
I take off my jacket thinking that it caused the electrostatic discharge (ESD), and go on, but not 10 minutes later, another ESD. God Damn It! ... and another 5 minutes lost to having to calibrate the autoguider.
I ended up removing my sleeping bag to prevent further ESDs. This came with a heavy cost, as I now did not have a place to lay, so I had to stand around for the rest of the session. With the sleeping bag deployed, I typically just lay on the ground, watch the stars wheel by, and watch for meteors. This is not as easy to do while standing.
I need to find a ground strap that I can use in the field to prevent this from happening again.

Categories & Keywords
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Subcategory:
Subcategory Detail:
Keywords:B 3, LBN 749, LDN 1468

Barnard 3 in Perseus