Imaging the Rosette Nebula - Part 2

Last evening the sky cleared just enough to get some additional subs of the Rosette Nebula.  This was crucial for my attempt at getting a nice final image of the Rosette in that the nebula is getting lower and lower in the western sky, hitting my tree-line before 11:30pm. And with daylight savings time coming up, the moon re-entering the scene and cloudy nights projected for the next 6 nights (although one model has clear skies for Friday) I needed to get as many subs as I could or wait 'till next year.

I had to set up the scope rather late in the evening, around 9:00pm and get everything up and running before 10:00 or so with any hope of imaging 20 subs before the nebula dropped too low. This didn't leave enough time for the OTA to cool-down to ambient temperature, but I couldn't wait the normal 60 - 90 minutes. Everything worked almost perfectly and I was ready by 10:20. Since I had the previous image of the nebula saved out on Astrobin all I needed to do was link to that image and SGP would automatically center the nebula exactly where it was on Feb 29th. SGP's plate-solve and auto-center worked like a charm - I started the imaging run at 10:30.

By 11:10pm the auto-guider started to 'beep' me (losing guide star lock) , and I figured either the nebula was in the trees or the clouds moved in. Turns out both were true. So the imaging run was aborted with 14 of the planned 20 completed.

Adding the new subs to the old ones and re-processing the set I was able to get a nice clean, less noisy image. Although not completely done with this object the lateness of the season means any further imaging will need to wait until next winter. It's time to seek out other DSOs.

Enjoy.

NGC 2238 - Rosette Nebula
EdgeHD11 - 24x180sec QHY10 Camera
March 9, 2016