Hi all,
I took the D3 with me on holiday in Maspalomas, Gran Canaria. The light pollution in Gran Canaria (Maspalomas) is officially Bortle 7. This is what it looked like from the hotel balcony, so quite some lights from hotels and pubs:
I selected M16, with the ‘Pillars of creation’, as that was nicely visible in the southern sky. Limited by the balcony walls and ceiling, I was impressed how easy it was to do the polar alignment for the EQ mode. Using the iOS compass app (in True North mode) I was able to quickly align the D3 with 2 degrees precision. Ok, it did take a few attempts as the calibration was initially trying to look for stars blocked by the walls on the balcony, but it quickly corrected itself once it found some stars to align with in a more southern direction.
Unfortunately I forgot to select the ‘Duo-Band’ filter, but the first sessions was still quite impressive. Especially for only 26 minutes, with the wrong filter.
The next evening I gave it another shot. However, some clouds started to roll in, and in combination with the high light pollution, the success rate of the stacking was way below optimal. I started loosing around 50% of stacked images which were discarded during the process. Still, for only 16 minutes of integration time (60 seconds, gain 60, Duo-band), the resulting image was quite stunning. Post-processed in ‘Stellar Studio’ and some personal preference tweaking in iOS Photos app.
Knowing the capabilities of the D3, and the theory that total integration time rules everything, I decided to give M16 another shot the day after, making sure I got at least 1 hour of integration time. The D3 continued to struggle a bit with the stacking, I guess due to the impact of the high light pollution in the street, but I continued the session until I had 1 hour of stacked subs. This time at 30 seconds, gain 50, as I had a feeling the success rate was a bit better. Going with 60 seconds it struggled even more.
Finally I used ‘Megastack’ in the DWARFLAB app to combine the 2 sessions. I could not include the first one (shot with Astro filter), as for megastack the filter of the sessions needs to match. The result is just amazing! Only 1 hour and 19 minutes of stacked subs…
For the fun of it, and to highlight the beauty of this deep sky object, I also decided to use the star removal feature:
M16, with it’s ’Pillars of creation’… what a majestic deepsky object it is!
Overall a successful capture, during a holiday, from a hotel balcony at Bortle 7 with a skyline of hotels lighting up (polluting) the sky! Dwarf 3 really puts the universe in your hands! Wherever you go!
As the holiday ain’t over yet (still 1 week to go), let’s see what other object I can target, from within the confines of this hotel balcony!
To endless exploration, starry nights, and a little bit of cosmic nerdiness!
TTG
