Finally, a clear night after over two weeks of clouds! Continuing with galaxy season, I was able to fit two neighbors into one frame, the Whale and the Crowbar galaxies. Guiding was kind of having a fit since there weren’t any good, bright stars in view, but it all averaged out in the end. I ended up with almost five hours of data before it went behind the trees.
I’m still having troubles with flat correction. There are some kinds of reflections that occur in the light frames that move as the skyglow changes, so flats stand no chance of correcting them. I used the V channel from the HSV composition of the flats I took, so it at least didn’t add more color problems. This seemed to work a little better than using a normal flat. I still had to clobber the background to get a decent result.
