I am not able to keep up with the images I have taken this week as I am so unused to having several clear nights in a row. Having just changed over to UV/IR cut filters on the 200mm lenses to carry out star work, the first star region I chose to image a few nights back was M44 in Cancer. I managed to get 20 x 10-minute subs before I hit the Meridian and packed up for the night. I had done this one before with the M26C OSC CCDs, so why did I do it again with the ASI 2600MC Pro CMOS cameras? I have been highly impressed with the CMOS cameras and I was expecting to see an order of magnitude improvement in the image. And the result? No real discernible improvement! This is actually a very good thing. It means there is absolutely no need to go over all my old M26C images and repeat all that work with the CMOS cameras – that was something I was really not looking forward to doing.
So here I present to you – for the second time – M44, the Beehive Cluster sitting within the Stargate – the 4 central bright stars in the constellation Cancer.
