Ad Astra Observatory

We left the house around 8am, 4 people, with a packed trailer, Skybox, and “way back”. We headed north via Chico and Susanville. Let’s call it “the scenic route”. The drive was long but without major incident. We arrived at the star party site around 6pm. The wind was cranking pretty good. We got the tent and canopy set up by the kids’ bedtime at 8pm, and I started in on getting the Ad Astra Observatory at Frosty Acres set up. I decided to go easy on myself and mounted up Pumpkin, since I knew that I had a lot of work ahead, getting the polar alignment right, etc.

Leveling the tripod was a little tricky. I ended up using a spare counterweight under one leg. It felt pretty stable, but I resolved to be nice to the mount.

The LED for the polar scope is flaky, and was not working right this evening. So I moved straight into WCS. This took a long. time. I ended up adjusting the Elevation by “standard drift alignment”; I let the star drift in software, and as soon as it stabilized, I adjusted the mount in the proper direction (without using the software to help set up the corrections). Even so, it was well after midnight before I had a halfway decent polar alignment.

Once I was more or less aligned, I switched to the main camera, focused, and decided I needed a really easy first target, so I went for the oldest saw in the book, M31. The first subframe of the star party came in at 1:45am. I set up without an Ha filter, since I’d decided to shoot only RGB from the star party (I can shoot Ha at home). I also removed the IDAS LPS light pollution filter for the first time since I got it. It felt … naked. So weird.

Two awesome-looking subframes of M31, and it was starting to get late, so I decided to switch to another target to run the rest of the night, and catch some sleep.

I moved over to IC 1805, The Heart Nebula, and stayed up long enough to see the first subframe come in, so I could tell I was framed properly. I got to bed around 2:30, and set the alarm for 5am to shut down and cover the scope.

When I woke up at 5, the laptop was already dinging because it had lost the guide star. The sun had risen around 4:30. Jupiter was still blazing bright and high in the south at 5am.

Battery charging went without a hitch. The bike trailer was great for that. Internet was essentially unusable from the site; I never got online tonight.

Seriously dark sky, no light domes at all. The brightest area of sky was where I think the sun was so high that it never set completely in the north, so the northern horizon was ever-so-slightly blue. I could see the Big Dipper go all the way horizontal to the northern horizon (“The Bear Never Bathes In Ocean”). There were a few locals who “forgot” to turn off their outside lights. But generally, the sky was just gorgeous. I certainly didn’t need a light pollution filter. Nice.