Ad Astra Observatory

One reason that I like to leave my equipment all set up and ready to go is because it seems like it takes a couple of nights for the gear to all “settle in” after a change. I had the camera off, so I decided to try the planetary camera, with one of the new Powermates I’d gotten. Mars and Venus have been hanging out high in the West after sunset, and so I thought I’d give them a try.

Venus is a tricky target; often close to the Sun, very bright, and with almost featureless clouds (if shot unfiltered). Mars would have been better served if shot on the other side of the sky, closer to opposition. I got them on the camera (which is nice), and in focus more or less (also nice), but the Powermate was giving a lot of magnification (it’s the 4x one), and when I tried without it, Mars got tiny. Meh, I’ll figure out my planetary mojo later.

I then put the main camera back on, and it took a bit to get it all working and focused again.

Target selection during this time of year is difficult; lots of dim and tiny galaxies (which is, I guess, why Cassie is on the mount), but there’s sort of a hole between Orion/Gemini and Leo/Coma/Virgo, where there’s pretty slim pickings.

I took a swing at an object that’s a bit far to the West already, NGC2264 The Christmas Tree Cluster (and Cone Nebula). I need to get 100% dialed in with my balance &c because I should be able to shoot a lot farther West than I seem to be able to, at the moment. I don’t know if it’s mirror flop or a floppy rig or balance issues or what, but it stinks.

Anyway, I got one 20m subframe of NGC2264 (and two trailed ones 🙁 ), and needed to find another target.

So I went hunting in Coma Berenices, which has a couple of nice galaxies.

…

and plate solving went offline. There are very few stars over in the Coma area, and the platesolver just wasn’t able to lock in. So I thrashed around a little more, trying to get something working, and of course, the moon came up.

I am currently shooting M3 (I am not a huge fan of globular clusters, but it’s not going to get washed out as much as a galaxy would), but I’m irritable and tired of fighting, and I might give up and go to sleep.

Wake me up when Cygnus rises.