NGC2997 – Feb 2023

I have been working on this for the past week or so, capturing photons in 3 minute subs for a combined 15 hours of imaging time to generate the final RGB image.

Image Details :
100 x 180s for each of R, G & B
100x 180s darks and 100 Bias frames for calibration

Equipment :
GSO RC10″ Truss on the SkyWatcher EQ8 Mount
QHY268M cooled mono camera set at -10C and 2×2 binning
Antlia 2″ R, G & B filters mounted in the QHY L Filter Wheel
Moonlite crayford focuser with Motor control
QHY5 guide camera with QHY OAG
PegasusAstro Ultimate PowerBox v2 for power distribution, USB hub and Focus motor control
All housed in the Nexdome Observatory and run by a scope mounted NUC mini pc

Processing software :
Mount interface with GreenSwamp Server (GSS)
Guiding by PHD2
Image Capture controlled by Sequence Generator Pro (SGPro)
Image Calibration, Registration, Stacking , Deconvolution by PixInsight
Image stretching and final processing in Photoshop

After a few tweaks to the polar alignment I was able to get the guiding into quite a sweet range : sub 0.5″ in both axis without PPEC.

Guiding performance from PHD2


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