This image shows emission nebula Cederblad 214 in Cepheus. This nebula is a small part of the larger 'Question mark nebula' which I imaged a long time ago with inferior equipment/skills (here). Lots of dark nebulas are snaking their way through the image.

There was a bit of a diagonal banding noise in the final image, so I was not abale to stretch the fainter parts of the nebula as much as I wanted to. In addition, rather than my usual 'gentle' noise removal, I was a bit more aggressive.

Date: September 20, 2014
Time: 10:00 pm - 2:50 am
Camera: SBIG STF-8300M
CCD Temperature: -10 C
Optics: Takahashi Sky 90 II @ 406 mm fl (f/4.5)
Filter: Astrodon 5 nm H-alpha
Light frames: 18x15 min
Dark frames: none
Flat frames: 50
Bias frames: 50
Binning: 1x1
Guiding: Orion SSAG @ Orion finder (~162 mm)
Mount: AP Mach 1
Dithering: Manual
Processing: Stacking in CCDStack, Curves, Levels, and noise removal actions in PSCS6.

Other notes:
The main goal of the session was to align a recently installed RAPAS to my Mach 1. I had no idea how long this would take, as the push-pull mechanism is not very cleverly designed. After 10 minutes I thought I had it aligned, but at the end of the session I noticed that the mount was no longer leveled East-West, so I may have to redo that alignment. :(

I FINALLY hunted down a small bug that has been harassing my system for a couple of months now. When taking a series of ~50 exposures, I would occasionally get one or two images that would be pitch black. I randomly bumped into a thread on cloudynights where SBIG users were commenting on their power connector giving them issues, and it finally clicked in my head - this could be an electrical issue. So I separated my connector with a screw driver, and sure enough, 150 consecutive frames without a single black image.