ASTRO: M77 through clouds

The clouds win, I give up. I've been trying for 2 months on this one.
The one good night the desiccant canister worked loose and I had a nice
foggy spot in the center of the image. All other nights have been
through clouds. I combined all 10 attempts, over 5 nights, though only
one frame was clear the entire 5 minutes of the subframe. On 3 I forgot
and had the guider running. For 5 minute sub frames that is not needed
but I did it anyway. Once the clouds covered the guide star it would
search for it making for some funny looking double and triple lobed
stars. Without those three frames it was noisier than I'd expect so I
went back and put them in. I should have rounded the stars first. The
new observatory curse took months to hit but has come down full force.
It's snowing like crazy right now. It needs a lot more time to catch
the outer arms. They are almost there in this version. I could bring
them out but they were so far in the noise it wasn't worth it. I
cropped the image as there was nothing much of interest at the edges.
There are some other interesting galaxies nearby I'll try if the weather
ever changes. Only good news is the Robo-focus interface box is back
and working fine. I can now keep the scope in focus if ever I can see
something.

14" LX200R@f/10, 10x5 minutes, STL-11000M, Paramount ME

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

"Rick Johnson" wrote in
....
The clouds win, I give up. I've been trying for 2 months on this
one...........

Rick, I once took 3 years of trying before getting a good image of a galaxy
cluster near M-30. M-77 is one of those objects that everything has to work
just right to get. I have some recent un-processed data on it but I don't
think I did as well as you.

George N