SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
KuriousGeorge
Location of Photo:
Julian, CA
Date/Time of photo:
January 7-8 2024
Equipment:
CDK24
Description:
December and January are challenging month for astrophotograhy in Julian, CA. It's either cloudy, windy or just very poor seeing even when it feels so calm. I decided to switch back to the 16803 CCD as I was planning on taking lengthy Ha for an M82 revisit. The 6200 CMOS has severe fringing with an Ha filter. This would require taking sky flats. This is too much overhead for my relatively short astro visits. The 16803 does not have this fringing issue and can go much deeper in Ha with very quick light-panel flats. I planned to shoot NGC 2336 from 7 to 9 PM and then switch to M82 from 9 PM to 5 AM with the goal of taking at least 40 hours of M82 Ha. Then I realized that I was having some pretty rare January steadiness! So rather than "waste" that on Ha, I decided to keep going with NGC 2336. (-: Here's 6 hours of L with 24 15-minute subs between 2.4" and 2.9" with a 2.6" average. I've had better, but rarely this time of the year. The RGB subs were between 3" and 4".
