Ad Astra Observatory

The skies cleared again tonight! Second time in a week, with about 2 weeks of continual rain going on around them. Interesting.

The moon is one day before 1st quarter, so I got a good chance to get Trixie out and took a peek at the moon for the first time with her. Very nice. Here’s the photo:

From this photo, I could see by inspection that the scope is out of collimation. To confirm, I shot a photo of Aldebaran:

No problem. I will spend tomorrow tuning.

Once I’d convinced myself that Trixie is ready for a tuneup, I decided to use the rest of the clear sky to do some imaging. Since Veronica+Pumpkin+guider is not really working, I mounted up Pumpkin by herself (a first!) and set up for some Ha widefields in the winter Milky Way.

I should have some pixels of M42 and The Rosette on the way… but that’s another post.

It’s good to be under the sky again. Very clean air out there tonight.