Alignment
went smoothly, after I re-attached the cable holders that got pushed off of the
Styrofoam in the box that hold the Ethernet cables from the electronics pier to
the mount – it was having some difficulty finding the switch position due to
bad connections. (RA wasn’t moving, and
then RA was over-driving). However, PHD
would not talk to ASCOM, so it wouldn’t talk to my mount nor my QHY5. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was
caused by a recent Windows update, so I rolled back the update, and sure
enough, PHD worked again. (For the
record, FireCapture worked just fine the whole time). So I guess I won’t be updating my tablet for
a while…So that lost me some time. I
finally started imaging around 10:30 PM.
I’d already gotten out there a half hour later than I wanted to, so I
was rushing to get started. The first
object I did was the Helix Nebula – one that has long eluded me. I’ve never seen even a hint of it at 30s or
visually. But a 5-minute exposure
finally revealed it. I took 15 of them,
got 12 usable ones, and the stack came out great! I also used the SkyGlow filter again.
Helix Nebula, Nikon D5300 on my C11, f/6.3 focal reducer, Orion Skyglow filter
Guiding: QHY5 on my Orion ST-80
12x300s, ISO-3200
After
Helix, I moved up to the Crescent Nebula, and after losing a few frames because
I forgot to turn guiding back on after I did Precise GoTo, I took another 15
images on the Crescent Nebula. I still
wasn’t able to get any of the detail on the interior part, but you can see the
bottom of the arc better with 5-minute subs.
I got 7 usable ones; guiding got unstable as time went on. This was also taken with the SkyGlow
filter. It was pretty high altitude,
which may have been why guiding was a little iffy.
Crescent Nebula, Nikon D5300 on my C11, f/6.3 focal reducer, Orion Skyglow filter
Guiding: QHY5 on my Orion ST-80
7x300s, ISO-3200
Overall,
things went well. I left at 2 AM because
I had church to get to on Sunday morning, but I left it set up to return on
Sunday night.
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