Ad Astra Observatory

I did not quite get plate solving working today. That is, I solved this image, but I couldn’t get the mount to even try to re-center on the new coordinates, and I was worried about losing sky, so I just said “OK, you get to stay where you are”, and started rolling.

My standard imaging set includes an hour of 5min subframes (an even dozen), followed by 2 hours of 20min subframes (six). The guiding got real boring during the first hour, and I was able to soldier through another hour-and-twenty before I was too tired to deal with it anymore, and shut down for the night.

What a beautiful night. I keep resolving to shoot more targets in Leo and Virgo, but I discovered the joy of leaving the dome facing east, and that helps a lot (at least, until I get dome automation running), so I decided to hunt my favorite galaxies, up near The Big Dipper, instead.

This is M63, the Sunflower. It’s a tough test of the optical system, because of all the wispy spiral arms. And of course, it’s nowhere near the center of the frame, because I don’t want to talk about it, see above.

I’m starting to get the hang of the new capture software. They haven’t quite “earned my business” yet, but it’s pretty close.