Exoplanet WASP-80b (8/8/2020) – IMT3

22:00 – 01:44 (GingerGeek came over and Bob was remote)

So the original plan was to perform another exoplanet observation and improve/learn from our previous experiences. However the weather did not look like it was going to be accommodating so we decided to change plans.

At first we planned to take a shot of Pluto and then go back to it later on in the month to see how far it had moved but it was low and below the the IMT3 visible horizon.

Next up was to continue imaging Messier objects for Dave’s Messier Marathon collection. We settled on M14 and had created and started an imaging sequence but again the clouds rolled in putting a stop once more to some constructive imaging.

So we then decided to track an asteroid for as long as we could before the clouds stopped us. Once Dave had loaded the asteroid database into TheSkyX we then choose one close by to the previously planned Exoplanet. The asteroid 85275 1994 LY (magnitude 14.01) was in the constellation of Ophiuchus.

We turned off PHD autoguiding and mount control in the SGPro control panel as we were going to be using mount tracking on the asteroid instead of sidereal.

Autofocus using Luminance filter – 60,389 position, HFR 5.0, Temp 24.94℃. We started at 22:46 and took a series of 30 second images until the cloud cover stopped us. Dave then used the Pixinsight blink script to stitch the resulting FITS->PNG images into a movie, then looped the short AVI, added titles and music in iMovie (best viewed full screen and in HD).