Ad Astra Observatory

Well, it was clear tonight. That’s about the best thing that happened tonight.

The scope booted up and is working eh, ok. The polar alignment is off, and I never did check collimation today.

The autoguider absolutely did not do the job tonight. I don’t know what the problem is, but wow. Every single frame was trailed, until the mirror fogged up at 11:00 and I had to quit for the night.

I tried a couple of 20min frames, but ended up dropping to 10min to see if it would help. It didn’t.

I ended up using 8 not-so-great frames and depending upon Median stacking to fix the tracking. shrug. The image is not up to the standard I’ve set for myself. For an Ha image, it’s hardly better than I could do full-spectrum in the same amount of time.

This is 8×10min (80 minutes total).

Apparently I forgot to save only the red channel so it would be B&W. oh well.

In short, I’m a bit frustrated. Again. Or “still”, if you prefer. This rig is a lemon.

I don’t even know what to mess with. I’m going back to shooting with Pumpkin starting tomorrow. Maybe I’ll try Veronica again when the OAG gets back.

sigh. If that doesn’t work, maybe I need a big Dob…

It’s still clear out at midnight. Nice night. a bit warmer, very high humidity.

At the end of the night, I closed the roof, then re-opened it and worked over the polar alignment with the polar alignment scope. I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing, but I lined up Polaris and what I think must be “the second star” so they’re both on the lines. We’ll see what Gemini says about my alignment when I redo my model tomorrow. It will be easier once I get the reticle back on Veronica and have the Ha camera on Pumpkin.

Stupid rig.