ROAST :: 10 2026

October 10. A lovely clear night started with a country-wide aurora:

This was taken with a phone — I tried using the Mini’s wide-angle camera but it had a very limited view to the north, and it didn’t work well.

A ggod start to the evening. I then set up a schedule of three objects, starting with some more work on the Soul Nebula.

–to come–

Next up was a 2-panel mosaic of the Flaming Star Nebula, IC 405, in Auriga:

Details:
Target: IC 405 (Flaming Star Nebula)
Equipment: Dwarf Mini, Duo-Band filter, perfect EQ
Time: 2026-10-11 01:08-04:55
Integration: 3hrs 20mins (200×60secs, +4 failures), gain 60; 1hr 40mins/frame
Conditions: Clear, Bortle 6
Processing: PhotoDesk equalisation, gamma

This has both emission and reflection areas, so might benefit from combining with an Astro-filtered session.

Finally, Mars was passing through the Beehive Cluster in Cancer. This is fairly low in the sky at the moment and only gets to be visible at 5am or so. I used 30-second exposures and reduced the gain to 40, to hopefully not blow out Mars too much. The hour-long exposure did mean that Mars is slightly elongated though.

Details:
Target: M 44 (Beehive Cluster + Mars)
Equipment: Dwarf Mini, Astro filter, perfect EQ
Time: 2026-10-11 05:02-06:03
Integration: 54mins (108×30secs, +1 failure), gain 40
Conditions: Clear, Bortle 6
Processing: PhotoDesk equalisation, gamma

And so to bed…

October 7, another clear night and a repeat of the Oct 3 schedule. Like the previous schedule all three sessions were incorrectly marked as failed in the details panel of the app — a known “issue” in the software which will hopefully be fixed soon.

Here’s a megastack of the two IC 417 sessions. More detail, especially in the Fly:

I’ve reduced the star layer opacity to 60%, which brings out the nebulosity a bit more.

And so to bed…

October 3 was a fully clear night at last, with 0% chance of rain, so I did a schedule of three objects. The nights are getting much longer now, and the schedule ran from 8:00pm to 5:00am the next morning. I always connect a power bank when doing schedules (essential when it’s running for 9 hours), and next morning the Mini still had 100% power and the power bank still had some reserve. The bank I was using was from Lidl, the Tronic rated at 20,000mAh.

This is IC 417 and NGC 1931 in Auriga, known as the Spider and the Fly respectively. The Spider is an emission nebula about 7,100 light years away, while the smaller emission and reflection Fly nebula is a bit further, at 7,500 ly.

Details:
Target: IC 417 (Spider Nebula)
Equipment: Dwarf Mini, Duo-Band, perfect EQ
Time: 2026-10-04 01:04-05:00
Integration: 3hrs 32mins (212×60secs, +2 failures), gain 60
Conditions: Clear, waning gibbous Moon; Bortle 6
Processing: PhotoDesk equalisation, gamma

The middle session was yet another go at the Triangulum Galaxy, M 33. This is the result of megastacking all my efforts to date, 6 sessions combining 623 images using Astro and Duo-Band filters:

Better, but still needs improvement. I’m hopeful that when the Draco arrives it will do much better at this target.

And so to bed…

October 1, a clear night and another session with M 31 before it moves away.

This is a megastack of three mosaic sessions, with somewhat less aggressive processing than the previous effort. It’s easy to overdo unsharp masking, and here it’s radius 5, contrast boost 80%, threshold 0%. Good to have no failures in last night’s session though.

Details:
Target: M 31 (Andromeda Galaxy)
Megastack session 1:
 Equipment: Dwarf Mini, Astro filter, perfect EQ
 Format: Two-frame mosaic, 1.0×1.8
 Time: 2026-09-08, 23:20 - 04:03
 Integration: 3hrs 42mins (222×60secs, +28 failures), gain 50
 Conditions: Clear with sporadic cloud; Bortle 6
Megastack session 2:
 Equipment: Dwarf Mini, Astro filter, perfect EQ
 Format: Two-frame mosaic, 1.0×1.8
 Time: 2026-09-10, 00:10 - 03:01
 Integration: 2hrs 30mins (150×60secs, +1 failure), gain 50
 Conditions: Clear; Bortle 6
Megastack session 3:
 Equipment: Dwarf Mini, Astro filter, perfect EQ
 Format: Two-frame mosaic, 1.0×1.8
 Time: 2026-10-01, 20:52 - 01:21
 Integration: 4hrs (240×60secs, 0 failures), gain 60
 Conditions: Clear, waning gibbous Moon; Bortle 6
Total integration: 10hrs 12mins (5:06 per frame)
Processing: PhotoDesk equalisation, gamma, unsharp mask

And so to bed…