ROAST ::

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…