Come join the friendliest, most engaging and inclusive astronomy forum geared for beginners and advanced telescope users, astrophotography devotees, plus check out our "Astro" goods vendors.
Come join the friendliest, most engaging and inclusive astronomy forum geared for beginners and advanced telescope users, astrophotography devotees, plus check out our "Astro" goods vendors.
Normally I've been able to image in NB with the moon out (even fully) since so far most of the targets I've done this with have been pointing away from the moon by at least 30 degrees if not more. The other thing working in my favour has been the smaller scope (70mm OTA) so that even though it is a wider field, it has a smaller opening to take in extraneous light (I think this is a factor).
But just my bad luck, I was trying to do IC443 and the ~half moon has been right next to it, so I'm pointing the scope at relatively bright object that then causes loss of contrast, etc. I can see the moon light illuminating my scope - I'd guesstimate that the moon is less than 10 degrees out (but you can pull up Stellarium and check it out if you'd like to see my point) from where my 4" scope is pointing.
So the lights ended up being ruined I think but I'm wondering if there's anything I could've done different or if there was any way to salvage it.
It's strange since I've never experienced such a strong illumination before. It's almost as though the wrong filter was being used but I had used this filter earlier on another target pointing in the opposite direction and that data looks good. When I process this integrated image, I can see some signal but it requires so much tweaking that I can see the dust motes, etc.
