Ad Astra Observatory

I planned to solve all the images I’d shot so far, so that I have good data about where the telescope has ben drifting about.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until halfway through shooting the images, so I didn’t have the mount (which knows its position) hooked up to the camera for some of the images, so the mount position data hadn’t been helpfully written to the FITS header for me. Sigh. Another layer of the onion.

Anyway, I got most of it plate solved, using the PinPoint Astrometry in MaxIM. I even figured out Batch Mode, so I could do a whole set at once. And of course, I used TheSky to help out with coordinates in places where I needed to nudge the missing FITS data…

I am just learning to use DeepSkyStacker. It seems like it will be very helpful, but I’m just thrashing around with it for now. The Photoshop mojo is still coming back, too. I’m about the “Auto Levels” skill level right now. Just knocking off rust.

I got several nice images uploaded in the first few nights under the sky. I am going to catch up on sleep for the next few nights (it’s a full moon tonight), and pick this up as we begin Astrophotography week in 4 days or so.