Ad Astra Observatory

I’m in the process of changing houses.

Among all the other concerns, this means that Ad Astra Observatory at Newark, CA is nearing the end of its run. I’ve had a lot of good times in that little outbuilding, and I wanted sincerely to believe that a “tester shot” of the moon was not going to be the last photons captured here.

But it’s been raining for a couple of weeks now, that real intense kind of “it’s never going to stop” kind of rain, and I was starting to get nervous.

So when the astronomy gods finally cut me a break, I jumped on the chance to get some sky.

Trixie was still mounted up, and I tried her out on some DSOs, but found a small weakness in the mounting bracket which is preventing the guider from getting anything solid. Back the the drawing board, there. So what else is new? 🙂 Anyway, I decided to pull Trixie and put up Veronica.

That went pretty quickly, all told, and I was able to get Veronica loaded, balanced, and focused before the clouds started rolling in. This is essentially my first DSO work since the GSSP last July, and as usual, the image shows a little rustiness.

An hour of 10min exposures was all I could get before the clouds took over. It was good to get some photons, but I’m really not all that impressed with the shot.

It was then clear the next night as well, so back out I went, and back into Ursa Major. I decided that if I was going to pull down a junky image, it might as well be a junky image of a new object, so I could impress myself later with “how much more skilled I am now”. So I chased M97, The Owl Nebula. This is an object that I would normally have avoided with Veronica, being a little too small to really show a lot of detail. Also, with The Dipper placed right over the house, I’m sure I was getting some heat bloom off the roof. shrug. The image turned out, eh, ok, just like I expected.

It’s clear again today, so I expect I’ll be able to go hunting again tonight. Maybe I’ll see if I can get the focus tighter. Or maybe chomp some Leo instead of Ursa Major. We’ll see.

Thanks again, Ad Astra Observatory. It’s been a good run.