A 4-frame Hyperstar III mosaic of the Gamma Cassiopeia region taken a long while ago.

The Rosette nebula reprocessed using the proper procedure in Registar.

I guess it must be obvious that the weather hasn’t been too good recently and there’s no new data to work on.  So I revisited the Double Cluster and Stock 2 data taken using the Sky 90s and M26Cs on the mini-WASP array and came up with this.  Quite happy with this one now 🙂

A reprocess of the Sky 90/M26C data with North to the right – cropped to a smaller field of view.

Although this image probably only looks a little brighter – it also uses the proper (dual) dataset as well, so there’s a couple more hour’s worth of RGB data from the Hyperstar III in this one.

I actually spent a little while looking at the “Help” instructions that came with Registar in an attempt to see what it does and to hopefully apply it properly to mosaics.  Why has it taken me so long to look at the “Manual”?  Because I had to download some file or other from Microsoft to allow me to see a “Help” file with this Windows 7 64-bit system.  Now why this can’t be done automatically I don’t know – but eventually I read the file.  So here is the recent Monkey Head nebula data properly registered with old Hyperstar I data and cropped down to almost the old Hyperstar I/H9C field.

Managed to get 2 hours of 10-minute subs using the Hyperstar III on 26/01/2012.  In fact I got 4 hours worth of subs but didn’t realise the bottom of the image was being clipped by the trees over the back, so now I know how far south I can image, and it isn’t much below the bottom of M42 itself 🙁  So things like the Sombrero and NGC2170 are out of the question which is a shame.  Back to NGC1999.  Obviously this object needs a LOT more data, and the usual 8 hours total exposure time would seem to be about right.  Not sure if I will go back to this one to get more data or not.  In the much larger uncropped image there are also a pile of geostationary satellites, as much as a problem as the satellites that sit in the middle of the Witch Head nebula.  I can always image something else later in the evening of it remains clear I suppose but getting 8 hours of data in 2 hour chunks is a bit wearisome.  Might just move onto something higher up where I can get 4 to 6 hours in one go – we’ll see.

I sent off an image of the Horsehead nebula to be made into a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  Here it is freshly opened on a big piece of card.  I don’t think I made the best choice of deep-sky object for this exercise, too much dark stuff all around the edge which will be a pain.  Should have done something with structure throughout like the Belt & Horsehead or better still the Cone nebula region.  Maybe next time.

The same final process twiddles carried out on the Registar composite image of the Monkey Head nebula 🙂

Carried out some final (?) processing twiddles on the Rosette composite – think it’s just about there now 🙂