A good evening of EAA with the L-Enhance

Last time I used the EQ platform I noticed that the raiser attachments were getting loose. Both top and bottom parts are attached via two bolts. But when I put mounted them, I was only able to secure half the bolts with nuts.

Ten days ago or so, I worked on the platform and managed to get the second nut for the top part. For the bottom, I tightened everything the best I could after shifting the L shaped part back a bit which should give me back the full runtime for the platform.

Also a few days ago, I returned my L-Pro filter and pre-ordered the new L-QEF filter which is basically the L-Pro v2. I have not received the L-QEF so tonight I could only do imaging with the L-Enhance.

But once again the L-Enhance impressed me in its ability to reveal DSOs that were challenging or never attempted in the past. I started by making some bias and dark calibration frames, then align the platform as best I could. I enjoyed the real time live stacks of many DSOs for their vivid colors and details and even took longer than usual stacks: up to 5 or 6 minutes.

Afterwards when I looked at the save pictures, they were not as impressive and the stacking script washed out a lot of the color (or completely messed them up in the case of M42 Orion Nebula). So I spend some time trying to tweak the parameters to get better results. Some of the pictures below are crop of the JPG directly saved from ASILive and some are the result of running the stacking script.

Observations

Abell 85 Medulla Nebula - Cassiopeia - failed to see anything
Mel 245 Caroline's Rose cluster - Cassiopeia
NGC 7380 Wizard Nebula - Cepheus
C9 Cave Nebula - Cepheus
C11 Bubble Nebula - Cassiopeia
M52 Salt and Pepper Cluster - Cassiopeia
NGC 7822 Nebula - Cepheus
C2 Bow-Tie Planetary Nebula - Cepheus
IC 1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula - Cepheus
M1 Crab Nebula - Taurus
Mel 33 Letter Y Cluster and Nebula - Auriga
C31 Flaming Nebula - Auriga
NGC 1514 Crystal Ball Planetary Nebula - Taurus
NGC 1579 Northern Trifid Nebula - Perseus
M45 Pleiades - Taurus
M42 Great Orion Nebula and M43 de Mairan's Nebula and NGC 1977 Running Man Nebula - Orion
IC 434 Horsehead Nebula - Orion
NGC 2024 Flame Nebula - Orion
M78 Casper the friendly Ghost Nebula - Orion - not great - L-Enhance is probably not the best choice for that nebula
NGC 2174 Monkey Head Nebula - Orion
IC 443 Jellyfish Nebula - Gemini - launched the stack then started moving things back in the house but inadvertently stopped the stacking - it will be for another day