Got out for the first time in 2022.  It was a beautiful, mostly clear night.  Sky glow seems to be getting worse, as the sky doesn't seem as dark, even to the south.  Temperature was about -10C

Everything pretty much worked as expected.  I managed to spend a bit of time imaging M42, M44, M46 and the Rosette.

Spent the evening out testing the l enhance filter by taking a couple of images.  The filter seems interesting, although with a moon-less night and shooting to the south, I don't think I really need it.  Additionally, I tried to take an image of the Triphid Nebula, and was not able to register any blue at all.  It might be worth trying to use a filter wheel, if only to easily give me the visibility to switch between it and my IR cut filter easily.

I was also having some issues with my power supply.  It would blip randomly killing all power to the scope and/or power box.  Looks like I'll need to invest in a proper power solution soon.

SQM 18.32

19C

Spend another evening out imagine and testing the camera.  The ASI 294MC Pro seems like a great camera, however processing RGGB is proving to be a challenge.  I can't seem to get the green tint out of things.  I also think I'll need to invest in a nebula filter as I think sky glow is becoming an issue.

Overall though, it was a good night.

 

I've taken time over the past couple of weeks to clean up the observatory and upgrade some of the equipment.  The biggest change has been replacing the Kendrick dew controller and Kendrick USB hub with a Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox Advance.  What a great little piece of gear; I'm very pleased with it.

I have also upgraded the AP1200 chip to the V2 chip which has allowed me to start using Astro  Physics Control Center Pro.  Using this app, I can now utilize pointing and tracking models to more accurately point the scope and track much longer without the need of an autoguider.  APCC also allowes me to utilize meridian and horizon limits for safer slews and tracking.

In addition to all of this, I have updated all of my astronomy software so everything is running the latest versions and newest drivers.

All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with the state of things.  Everything seems to run properly and is talking well together.  The last two missing pieces are to finally get a flat-field panel (which is on order), as well as upgrading the CCD to a newer model (also on order).

 

SQM = 19.76

Temp = 9C

 

Sky Quality Meter - 20.07

Temp - 12C

Made a couple of attempts at Neowise, neither of which was terribly successful.  Hitting it up earlier in its appearance, and having a tracking mount and a good dark site would definitely have helped.  Lessons learned.

So, after having a terrible night last night and struggling with Maxim for hours, I went to bed at 4a and came across someone who has having the exact same issue as I was.  He was also trying to connect to his SBIG, and was getting the 1001 error... fortunately, there was a solution posted in the forum.  I installed the new DLL this afternoon, and it worked.  And with that, everything else fell into place.

Tonight, everything except the autoguider worked well.  My CCD still loses power occasionally, from a bad connector I think, but that can be fixed.  The scope pointed where it should, astrometric pinpointing worked, plate solving worked, FocusMax worked, and most importantly, I could image with Maxim.

All-in-all, it was actually a really nice night.  I took about 10 images of the Eagle Nebula, and another 5 subs of the Trifid Nebula.  I tried a galaxy over near M51, but the subs look pretty bad without guiding working in that part of the sky.

Sky meter was 19.79 at 16C

My time with my telescope seems to follow a pretty consistent trend of frustration and disappointment.  Every time I look forward to using it, things don't go right.  Everything went wrong tonight.. the Maxim won't see the SBIG CCD anymore.  Focusmax won't plot a Vcurve.  It took forever to get the focuser to even connect.  I can't even image Mars as it just turns into a big blob.

I guess it's time to pack in even trying to image until I at least have a camera that will connect to Maxim, as without being able to use Maxim, everything will just be an exercise in frustration.

 

 

I finally had a clear(ish) night on a weekend to fire up the scope again.  All in all, most things worked alright, but there's still room for improvement with regard to a better autoguider and cable management for the USB devices.

I spent the night taking a few quick images of Jupiter, M106 and M5.  It's windy as hell (the observatory is creaking and shaking constantly), so I don't know if anything'll actually come out.  Either way, it's been really nice to be out again.

SQM 18.7 with the full moon, and 22 degrees at 1am.

Just used the scope quickly today after putting a PCIe to Serial card into the observatory computer.  Hopefully this will allow for some more reliable communications with the mount from now on.

While I was out, I took the opportunity to take a quick shot of the Sun.

We finally had a couple of clear nights, and I made it out to the observatory to spend a few hours last night.  It was a beautiful evening, with a 1/2 moon, cool air, and the temperature was comfortable.  As I haven't used the setup in months there were (naturally issues), but I did manage to get some imaging done.

I took some video of the sun earlier in the day, and of the moon and Jupiter at night.  I'm happy with how things turned out for the sun and moon, however Jupiter was just a murky mess.  I'm sure that's more due to my Celestron than the sky.. I need to do something to speed up cooling of the tube.

I tried a little deep sky, but was plagued with autoguider issues.. either the camera wouldn't connect, or it would disconnect after 1sec of looping shots.  I think it's time I spent some time and money sorting out my power and USB requirements and come up with a more robust solution.

Tonight is the first opportunity I have had to use the telescope in over 2 months.  Although we've had a couple of clear nights, they have either been inconveniently in the middle of the work week, or a cold night after a warm day, so my CCD would just frost up anyway.  Tonight was fairly clear, but the transparency was poor, so focus was an issue.

I just took a quick crack at the Christmas Tree Nebula region.  After 2 hours of exposures, it's clear that I need better skies and a much longer duration to get a good result on this one.  I'd queued up to take some 10min subs, but the guider stopped working and when I went outside discovered that it was snowing.. time to call it quits and just take -25 darks for the rest of the night.

It's also becoming more and more evident with this camera that I need to start taking flats.  There's a pretty obvious gradient appearing in the images that I need to flatten out.

 

Was only our less than an hour tonight.  I got everything set up for an imaging run of M33, then cloud and fog rolled in about 1/2 later.  As its 10p now, I'll just pack it up for the night as opposed to seeing whether it clears up.

SQM = 19.16 and 1C

Just a quick note tonight as it's cold and late.

Beautiful clear and calm skies tonight.  Took a shot at the Iris and a Tycho target.. I have yet to process and see how they've turned out.. I'll likely post them tomorrow.

Skies are 19.84 tonight, and it's -3.

I hadn't really intended to take any pictures of the lunar eclipse tonight, but once it started, I figured I'd regret it if I didn't roll the roof open and take a few.

The forecast was calling for clouds, however the moon managed to stay between them for the most part.  I only headed out for an hour or so, but long enough to get about 50 images and enjoy the evening a bit.

 

Tonight is a fantastic night.. it's beautiful and clear, and also the night of the Perseid meteor shower.  Whether I put my Nikon on top of the scope to try to capture it is yet to be seen.

 

I've refined my polar alignment and got it pretty dialed in, and have got the QHY5L-II working as an autoguider on the WO66.  I'm currently capturing images of the Crescent Nebula and they seem to be tracking well, so tonight might turn out to be a very good night!

 

The next things I need to work out are my auto-focusing, and the field flattener.

Sky Quality Meter - 20.07

Temp - 9C

I did a little bit more imaging tonight.  I bought a 2nd hand SBIG ST-8300C which arrived today, and as luck would have it, it was clear tonight.  Getting the camera up and running was really easy, unlike the issues I had with the old QHY 9M.  First impressions of the camera are good though.. it cools down quickly and doesn't seem too noisy.  It'll be interesting to see how it works out with dark frames and proper focusing.

After getting the camera up and running, I did a quick polar align with PemPro.  I'm under 2 arc minutes in both directions, however still can only go 30-60sec without guiding before trails show up on images with the 98FLT.  I'll have to take a look at my PEC.. maybe that's messing things up somehow.

I have plate solving working again, but manually focusing is a pain, so I'll have to get that all hooked up soon.  To do that effectively though I'll have to make the mounting bar for the dew heater and such up on the scope.

One thing I did discover is that my Orion Starshoot Autoguider either doesn't work, or doesn't work with Windows 8.  It seems as though other people have a similar problem with it, but I'll have to find some solution.  PHD supports my QHY5L-II so I may go that route.. otherwise I'll find a camera that is specifically supported by Maxim.

I think my long mounting bar should be arriving tomorrow, so I'll finally be able to get all 4 scopes on the mount and set up.  Balancing will be a pain, but once it's all set up and running smoothly, it'll be worth it.

Well, this is my first real time using the observatory since we've moved home after the fire.  Things are just barely up and running.. the C14 isn't mounted yet, the mount isn't polar aligned, and only some of the software is running, but I've been itching to use the scope, so I thought I'd give it a try.

It was a nice night out under the stars.  Despite the lack of polar alignment, the scope worked well, if inaccurate in its pointing.  The QHY5LII-M worked alright (the driver still hangs a lot), and I had a chance to try the Mallincam SkyRaider DSC I picked up at AstroCATS.  All-in-all I'm not impressed with it yet.. it does capture images, but they're really, REALLY noisy.  Hopefully it's just something I don't know how to deal with yet.

I also tried to use my Nikon D5300, but Maxim DL doesn't recognize it for some reason.. I'll have to open a support ticket with that.

All in all though, I'm happy to have gone out.

Well, it's been many months since I've been out in the observatory.  Between a bitterly cold winter, the "Polar Vortex", piles of snow, and my laptop being nabbed to use with my 3D printer, I've not had an opportunity to head out.  That said, it was really nice to get outside tonight, however briefly.  I tried a couple of images of Mars and Saturn before the clouds rolled in.  Mars turned out ok, although I think I need to re-collimate and get the remote focuser working on the C14.

Although my last blog was back in August, I've actually played around with solar since, but have neglected to keep any notes of those observing sessions.  I've managed to put together a couple of reasonable solar animations, which are both in my gallery.

I've sold my QHY9M and have decided to go back to basics and work out some of my bugs before adding too much complexity to the setup.  As for tonight, I'm playing a bit more with the QHY5IIL-M to see what it'll do.  It does seem possible to do a bit of deep sky imaging with it, but will take some fiddling with the exposure and gain settings to get anything worthwhile.  It's certainly not a replacement for the DSLR or CCD.

One major upgrade I've made is to the observatory laptop.  I've installed Windows 7 and increased the hard drive to 500M, which seems to have eliminated my BSOD issues when streaming video from the QHY.

Now to get everything else sorted out!

Took a bit of time today to head out to the observatory, get everything up and running again, and capture some solar images.  It was partly cloudy so I was shooting in between clouds, but did manage to capture a couple of good shots.  It was a very active Sun today, so there was lots to look at.

It looks like something is now wonky with my mount-to-PC connection.  The keyspan USB to serial interface wasn't powering up or responding, so I switched it out with an old Belkin one I had.  With the Belkin I was able to connect to the scope, but it would disconnect a short time later.  I also had a number of BSOD occur, so it could also be that my laptop is packing it in.

Spent a couple of hours tonight experimenting some more with the QHY5L-II and saturn.  I had a bit more luck working with the 2x powermate, but images seem blurry and noisy.. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going wrong.  It is difficult to focus at that focal length, so I'll definitely need a mask or something to help out with that.

I also played around a bit at native focal length with similar results as last time.  I sort of wish I had a color cam to try out and see what I could do.

I did discover a bug with FireCapture 2.3 Beta 10 where the long exposures (greater than 1sec) seem to just loop at the same number.  I posted to the group to report the issue.  I star hopped from Saturn over to M51 (through the C14), syncing along the way, to try a longer exposure with the camera, but could only successfully do 1sec.  I was able to barely see M51 at 1sec (no structure or anything, just enough to know that it was on the chip), so it should be interesting to see what happens when I can run 30 or 60 seconds.

I took a bit of time yesterday to head outside and do some experimenting with the solar scope to see if I could eliminate the Newton's Rings.  Long story short, I couldn't.  Brian at KW Telescope suggested I try a few lenses to try to break up the interference pattern, but nothing worked.  I tried a moon filter, and the couple of filters that came with the camera (clear and IR?).  Looks like I'll have to buy a new camera if I want to get rid of them.

That said, I was able to pull some nice images through the high clouds.  Probably my best images of the Sun yet.

I finally got out to observe again the evening of May 2nd and gave the QHY5II-L a good try with Saturn.  I'm actually quite happy with the result when shooting at the native F11 through the C14.  I was able to capture a reasonably well-focused image.  When putting the Powermate in front of the cam though, everything goes to hell.  I'll have to experiment a bit more with that.

What I am having a big problem with though is system crashes.  It seems like when I have the cam streaming to the computer with relatively quick FPS, the computer either locks up, and blue screens.  I don't know whether it's the driver or the computer, but given the age of the laptop, and the amount of data that's likely trying to stream to it at high FPS, I'd assume the latter.  Now, if I can just manage with it as long as possible before replacing it, I'll be a happy guy.

On another up note, I rec'd an email from QHY stating that my QHY9 is fixed, and should be en-route back to me from China.

I had my first real opportunity to try my new mono QHY5 camera today on the sun, and buy is it different from my old cam. It's much higher resolution, and really sensitive... So much so that I'm having a really hard time finding the right settings to properly expose the sun, both surface and edge. Much more practice is necessary, but I can see the potential that's there, and really look forward to using it some more!

One downside is that I'm getting Newton's Rings with this cam when shooting in HA. Apparently it's solvable, but will take some experimentation. Hopefully I'll get some clear days soon. 

When I was imaging the Rosette nebula the other night, clouds came in before I could capture a proper set of RGB.  Tonight is going to be a short night, just grabbing the needed RGB to complete that set.

Took advantage of the relatively clear skies tonight by capturing some frames of the Orion Nebula. If everything turned out, I should have 5 x 5min RGB and 12 x 5min L frames.  I also captured a sequence of shorter images to try to process the core without blowing it out, but we'll see how that works out.

Autoguiding for the last 2 nights hasn't been working right... It slowly drifts down in the X axis in DEC. I'll have to get that figured out, but I seem to be able to image just fine at 5min exposures without guiding. 

 

Yesterday we had our big snow storm for the season, and today it's bright and sunny. As it was so nice and clear I took a quick look at the sun today ad it was absolutely amazing... Crystal clear, lots of different promenances of various types, etc. I only had about half an hour at the scope, but the time was worth it. I also took a little video to process later. 

Finally had a clear enough night (with no wind) to go out and run the scope for a bit.  After taking Dave's scope off and putting my guider back in place, things set up and came together pretty flawlessly.  I've taken 10 5min Lum exposures of the Rosette while the sky was quite clear, and I'm now queued up to do some 15min HA exposures, but there appears to be some high cloud now, so we'll see how it goes.  I've just got one frame from the camera so far, and the HA is absolutely amazing!

I did notice that I've got some high frequency moaning in the RA axis when moving at high speeds.. I assume it's a combination of the cold, and probably my fiddling around with the spacing of the gears when I was investigating the source of my backlash.  I'll have to go out in the daytime and fix that.

Spent the first evening outside in the observatory in a couple of months.. it's been terrible weather.  I spent a chunk of the afternoon roughly collimating a friend's 4.5" reflector, and a little of the evening star testing it.  Once properly collimated it turned out to be a nice little scope, although it was so cold that the eye pieces kept fogging up in seconds.  I did manage to take a couple of images of the moon with my DMK.

Relatively brief night tonight.  It's nice and cool, but transparency isn't the greatest.

I started the evening (around 11p) with a look at Jupiter, and took some vid of a moon (Europa?) just as it was entering Jupiter's disk.  I'll have to process it and see how it came out.

I spent about another hour with the horsehead region, and guiding (using PHD) was fine for the first hour  when running 5min exposures, but I set up another hour worth of 10min exposures, and guiding got wonky again.  I took a screenshot of my graph in PHD so I intend to post it to the AstroPhysics list tomorrow to see if anyone can give me any ideas.

Got a bit done, and was a pleasant enough evening.

Not a lot to report tonight.  It's a beautiful, cold, clear evening, and although I've been up since 8a driving Erin to work, I couldn't resist getting out and taking a little telescope time since it's been so long.

Everything seems to be working tonight (Maxim imaging, PHD guiding) and I'm just going to concentrate on getting some time on M33.  I have a few 900s L shots, but want to round it out with a bit of colour and a pile of shorter L.

Well, as it turns out, things didn't work properly with M33, so I changed gears to the Flame/Horsehead nebula area.  Things worked flawlessly there... I look forward to processing the result tomorrow!  It's only a couple of hours worth of images, but it looks like a really good start.

 

 

Last night was the first clear night in a very long time, and although it wasn't very transparent, I did get to work out some of the kinks in the system.

I ran PemPro a bit to measure the backlash, and it was signifcant in DEC.. upwards of 40arcsec.  Long story short, I took the DEC motor housing apart and discovered that the spur gear set screw wasn't seated properly, and the spur gear was shifting upon motor reversal, introducing the backlast.  I fixed that up, put it all back together and the DEC backlast is greatly reduced.. not perfect, but a LOT better than before.

I also played a bit with PHD guiding, and it works a LOT better than MaxIm guiding.  It means going back to much more user intervention during imaging sessions, but I'd much rather that than continue to be frusterated with MaxIm.  My stars still are not perfectly round so I'm convinced that there is something wrong in the imaging train, but for the meantime, I'll be using PHD and taking images manually.

The only real image I took was an hour worth of M33.  I thought I was shooting HA (as it's a 90% moon), but forgot to plug in my filter wheel, so I was really shooting Lum.

After my big flurry of activity trying to get my guiding sorted out last month, we've had nothing but clouds.  Tonight is the first clear night in weeks, so I thought I'd try a couple of the suggestions that folks on the forums have provided.  My target for the night was the Cirrus Nebula East.

The first thing I did today was tighten up my backlash.  Although I didn't seem to have "a lot", I wanted to make sure there was none there, so I followed the AP guide on tightening things up.  I don't know whether I can say that things are any better in the backlast regard, but they're certainly not worse.  Or at least I don't think so.. I'll check visually with Jupiter and see how responsive the moves are later.

Next I reseated everything with the 98flt.  I'd moved the tube rings in closer together to accomodate my solar filter, but wanted to make sure it wasn't introducing flexure and causing the oblong stars.  I also reseated the guider and snugged it down.

So, my conclusions are that I have two distinct issues..

Guiding - No matter what I do, I don't get a smooth graph.  It always seems to start out as a sawtooth in the X axis, sometimes smoothing out, other times not.  The Y axis varies anywhere from a smoothly wandering line to wild oscillations.  I've tried everything from trying to make guiding very fast and sensitive, to giving it lots of leeway with long delays between corrections.  Nothing seems to produce a good graph.  Mind you, I don't know what exactly it's doing to my images because of my second issue..

Oblong Stars - I get oblong stars regardless of guiding, exposure length, area of the sky, etc.  I tried reseating everything in the focuser on the 98FLT thinking that the camera might be slightly out-of-square.. nadda.  So, it's either the camera, or the telescope.  It should be a simple matter of determining which it is by getting another telescope up here and throw my camera on it and see if the problem persists.

Regardless of the issues, it's nice to be using the scope a bit again, even though I'm not getting anything really worthwhile out of it in the way of images.

The good news is that everything worked perfectly last night.  The scope did all of its imaging and parked itself when completed.  I got up this morning and closed the roof, shut everything down, and was pretty happy with my final Iris Nebula result.  Earlier this evening I tried "Dusk Flats" with CCDAP5, and they seemed to work out ok.  I started the session a little late so it didn't have time to take many, but I'll definitely be trying again!

On a negative note though my guiding was acting up again tonight, which foiled another perfect all-night imaging session.

Tonight is the first night I'm letting things run completely unattended.  I'm adding more L and RGB to last nights Iris Nebula, so I'm hoping everything works out ok.  I just hope that when I get up at 7a the mount is safely parked, and that it didn't rain!

Well, a fair bit has happened since I've last written.  I received a new replacement upper board for the QHY9 and it seems to have resolved the problem, so far so good!  I've also replaced the USB hub and it's working for the time being as well.  Lastly, I upgraded the memory in the observatory machine to 8MB, so things seem to all manage a little better.

I've been thinking a lot about whether I should sell the QHY9M and move to a one-shot color cam.  I seem to have a lot of difficulty getting images with the QHY9M that I'm happy with.. it's either a matter of not having the right calibration frames (flats), or I don't get enough color subs to put together a good image.  So, I've been thinking that if I were to switch to a color cam, it would drastically decrease the complexity of the setup.. no LRGB to deal with, only one set of flats, and always a color image at the end of the night.  The downside of course is the reduction in sensitivity, but I don' t know whether I'd even see a difference with these skies.  I'm going to give the QHY9M another shot by trying to be a bit more focused in my imaging efforts and concentrating on a couple of targets at a time, tracked by a spreadsheet.  We'll see.

It's a beautiful night out tonight.  No humidity, clear, windless, and nice and cool.  I'm imaging the Iris Nebula and will work on just it for the next few days to see what I end up with when I actually focus on something!

Well, following my last post regarding the problems with the QHY9, Qui of QHY says in the forums to me that my top board is toast and needs a replacement.  The good news is that it seems like he'll send me one without any problems, the bad news is, of course, that it'll take awhile to get here from China.  I did a little work with the CCD tonight to confirm that the problem does still exist, and to gather a few more details on the problem, so hopefully that'll be enough to get the ball rolling.

On a more positive note though, solar imaging is fun.  Brian Tao was out yesterday doing our engagement photos and wanted to see the scope, so I fired it up briefly on the sun to show him a white light and Ha view.  This afternoon I got it running again to try to get a whole solar disk imaged, but it's obvious that I'm going to have to capture more space around the sun to make it look good.  I'm happy enough with the individual images, but when they stack there are some edges missing that I'd thought would be there.. aw well, I'm getting there!

Well, I spent the better part of 3 hours fighting with my CCD tonight.  At first, it simply wouldn't connect.  Once it finally did, it was getting all speckly and causing weird histograms.  I've placed a couple of posts in the QHY forums to see if the problem can be figured out.. if not, I think I'm going to get rid of the camera.  I've spent as much time fighting with it as I have actually imaging with it.

In an attempt to have the night not be a complete failure, I turned the C14 toward the moon with the DMK on the back.  I still don't seem to be able to record above 30fps which makes such a bright object difficult, but it was a nice change of pace nonetheless.

I spent a little time out working with my SM40 on my 98FLT today, but boy was it hot.  It had to be about 38C in the observatory.  While the view was great at the eyepiece, I couldn't squeeze more than a few FPS out of the DMK, meaning that any images were over-exposed.  I'll have to give it a shot again and see whether I can get it running up at 60fps again where it works nicely.

I was able to use things and have them running very nicely they day I picked up the SM40 with great results (June 28).  It was another hot one, but for whatever reason was able to record at 60fps.  Connor helped out with the focusing and imaging, and we were able to image a couple of fantastic prominences; one appearing to me multiple arches or a hedgerow, the other more of a fountain.

Tonight was a beautiful night weather wise, but nothing seemed to work in the observatory.  I was plagued with connectivity issues to the mount, and was even having BSODs multiple times.  In the end, I had to use the keypad to get the scope parked, and it still doesn't really know where it is.

I also think I have a problem with the 12v power to the CCD.  I couldn't get the CCD to work, and noticed that when I moved one of the power wires, everything powered up.  Move it again, everything shuts down.  I'll have to explore that further.

The only good thing about tonight (other than it being really nice out!) was that I did manage to capture some L of the Eagle Nebula.  Certainly not enough for a full image, but it'll be a start.  If I can get my connectivity issues sorted, the Eagle should end up looking quite nice.

Yesterday was the final transit of the Sun by Venus for this decade.  The Hamilton RASC held a public viewing event at Saltfleet School in Stoney Creek, and there was a great turnout.  It's approximated that about 600 people turned out for the event.  We had perfect weather for the entirety of the event.. sunny, warm and clear right past sunset.

I was there with the kids, with my 98FLT and Baadar filter on one of Gary's mounts, and with my DMK21 connected to his PST on another.  For the majority of the time I was manning the computer on the PST and showing people the view from there, but fortunately it did give me the opportunity to do some imaging, which I'm thankful for.

The kids came with me and I think they had a good time as well.  They all enjoyed looking through the telescopes and seeing the Ha images on my computer.  Everyone had mylar sun shades and although they worked, Venus was just tiny and sometimes difficult to see.  I think all of the kids managed to see it though with naked eye, and certainly many times through the scopes.

Erin arrived about 6:30p and stayed until about 7:45.  It was nice having her there as not only could I share the event with her, but she also helped out with showing things to people through my 98 while I was busy with people on the computer.  Although she won't admit it, I think she enjoyed be able to show things to people too.

Last night I spent many hours fiddling with various running parameters, and capturing data for NGC6888. First, the fiddling..

I evaluated my PEC curve, both by running an analysis cycle with PEC on, and comparing it to a run with PEC off. PEC on was better, at less than 2 arc sec total PE, compared to about 2.5 PE with PEC off. I'll try keeping PEC on for my imaging runs now to see whether it seems to make any difference to my guiding graphs. 

Next came polar alignment. Again, alignment was good when checking it with the 98flt, with DEC being about 1 arc-min off, and RA being about 2 arc-min off. Both are well within tolerances. 

For imaging, I set up a couple of hours L run on NGC 6888. Everything worked well, and I have some good L data. When I started to run RGB, my guiding errors jumped up to over 1 pixel, when previously it was about .1-.25. Its not the first time that's happened, and I'll need to find a solution to it, as I don't know if it's a CCDAP or Maxim problem. 

When I was about done for the night I did a quick sample of the Ring Nebula and the Dumbell Nebula. The ring was absolutely tiny at the focal length of the 98flt, and certainly not worth imaging. The Dumbell on the other hand, while small, isn't too small to image. I'll have to give that a shot and see how it turns out, especially where it's colorful. The last thing I too a quick look at was the Trifid Nebula, which was again small, but worth imaging. 

I did experiment with Saturn briefly on the C14 and using a Barlow, but I'm not happy with focusing... Collimation also looked out again. Perhaps mirror locks would resolve that for me. 

I started out tonight taking a quick look at the collimation on my C14, and found it to be quite far off with a simple star test.  I spent a little time trying to hone the collimation in a bit, and although not perfect, it's certainly an improvement over before.

Following the recollimation, I thought I'd give imaging Saturn a quick shot, as its been quite a few years since I've done it, and certainly not since getting the new camera.  I used Fire Capture (also for the first time) and am quite pleased with what I was able to do with a very quick and simple focus and imaging run.

After enjoying Saturn for a little while, I set up my imaging run for RBG on M81/M82.  Its underway now, and I should be able to capture at least 2 of the three channels.. I just now noticed that I set up 10 exposures of 5min each, instead of 5 of 5.

Still trying to complete my M81/M82 region with some colour and HA data, but naturally, clouds rolled in within the first hour of imaging.  Hopefully it'll be clear tomorrow night and I can give it another shot.

Was out for a little bit tonight, but with fighting high clouds, decided to call it a night relatively early.  I did take the opportunity to use the C14 visually for a short bit, taking a quick look at the Venus (in crescent), Moon, Mars, and Saturn.  I've discovered that the C14 is out of collimation, so I'll have to do something about that if I intend to image through it.

Just a quick night tonight, as Dorothy and Brian were over for dinner.  I gathered a couple of hours work of images of the M81 and M82 area while we sat, chatted, and drank wine.

The mount and USB seem to be working properly again together without any problems at all tonight.

Last night it seems as though I spent more time fighting issues than I did imaging.  I went out to the observatory around 9p, and for some reason the mount wouldn't communicate with the computer.  I couldn't get TeleAPI settings to open to confirm that it was using the correct ASCOM driver, so switched to ASCOM Telescope Driver.  After many computer reboots and power cycles of the mount and hub, things finally got talking, around 10p.

I set up an imaging run of M81 and M82, when the 2nd issue occurred... CCDAutopilot 5 wouldn't talk to the focuser.. it kept saying it wasn't connected, when it clearly was.  After some quick troubleshooting (changing cables) and googling, I discovered that FocusMax needs to be running and connected BEFORE running CCDAP, or else it kicks the error.  I finally got imaging around 10:30, and by midnight, high clouds had rolled in and foiled my tracking.  After going out to try to check things out, I discovered that the mount was again not talking, and Maxim had become unresponsive.

What followed was more fiddling with USB, because the mount wouldn't talk to the computer again.  Reboot, power cycle, reboot, powercycle, and things finally started working again.  By this point it was late, and I figured I might as well go to bed.

Not a lot accomplished last night.. although I did manage 11x5min of M81/M82 area, and have decided to replace my USB hub, and delete/reinstall the observatory computers USB drivers to see whether that helps.

Just had a short night outside tonight. I started a 3 hr imaging run of the Leo Triplet, mainly to see how CCD Autopilot handled the meridian flip. Everything went perfectly... It stopped paused the session before the flip was due, and right on time flipped over to the other side of the mount. After plate solving, the imaging session resumed. The only thing I noticed is that went near the meridian, Focus Max will still pick a star on the other side of the meridian. 

I captured some 15min frames of the triplet to add to my existing project, but could only shoot until 12:30 as clouds rolled in. 

Tonight I'm putting my new power distribution box through its paces.  So far things seem to working properly, with the exception of what looks like my USB hub going into limbo at the end of a 3.5 hour session of capturing HA.  Tomorrow I'll look at picking up a new hub, as I'm not entirely sure the one I'm using isn't the one I fried awhile ago by plugging it into the wrong power connection.

Speaking of HA, I set up a run of 10 images at 1200s each for M101.  I'm not sure that there's a heck of a lot of HA in the galaxy, but figured it'd be work a shot just to see what comes out.  Not much else to shoot this time of year with a full moon!

I figured I'd also refine my Vcurves and filter offsets too while I'm just futzing around.

Out again tonight and had a lot of success.  Although my images still are not showing totally flat, I think they're manageable for the time being.  I've spent tonight just working on collecting L subs for M101, which I hope to be able to add more L and some RGB to tomorrow night.

I spent a little time experimenting with CCDAutopilot tonight, and I have to say, I like it.  I did all of my imaging with it tonight, and figured out how to set up a session, have it auto focus after a set period of time, and even calculate my filter offsets.  It seems to work quite well, and I think I'll be using it fairly often, given my need to refocus frequently.  If I can get it handling my imaging sessions for me, including dealing with meridian flips, I'll be pretty much set to go.  Once I'm comfortable with it slewing unattended all night, I'll take a look at it's automated parking and shutdown.

All-in-all, another great night.. although, I do see some clouds going over now... darn.. that'll screw up the offset calibration!

Spent the night out in the observatory.  I seem to have about rectified my field flattener problems with using the new Orion FF, and a slightly larger spacer between the filter wheel and the FF.  What I did discover is that when checking field curvature and such with CCD Inspector, images got progressively worse as the evening went on, because refocusing was required.  Once I refocused, things looked much, much better.

Beautiful night.. mild, clear, still, and just the sound of the coyotes in the distance.

After taking some test images, I focused on M106, trying to accumulate some good LRGB+HA images.

While imaging I played around with CCD Autopilot.  It looks quite powerful and worth using, but I'll have to experiment more to see how well it will work for my purposes.