20:00 – 21:30
IC5067 Pelican in OIII and SII, rotated to new angle to allow guide star on West side of the mount. 10 x each channel at 600s and Gain 139 Offset 21, left running and dome shut later in the morning.
Rotation angle 218 from SGPro plate solve, 171.750 from TSX
Flats done the following day 3rd Nov.
Flats darks and darks still to be done
21:17 – 00:28
Progress meridian flip tonight. Nearly worked, challenge was I lost the only guide star and then it fixed on hot pixel. I have now made the setting for star recognition min 3 HFD but still not guide star present. I need guide scope……
22:30 – 03:57
Tonight I am at Kelling Heath star party with Shane and Mark Radice. After a fantastic board game with Mark, Shane and Shane’s wife we then headed back to camp and I started to look through there binoculars using the NSOG (????) book as my guide. Whilst I realised I could have got away with bringing the Milkway edition, instead I brought along the Autumn/Winter version.
I had packed my 100mm Altair Astro binos so it was going to a visual night with some rudimentary drawing. I looked around and set my gaze on Pegasus and turned to the pages in the guide to set me off.
First on the list was M15. It appeared relatively close to
m15 – seen
peg 1 – seen
3 peg – seen
53 peg major seen not companion
ngc 7217 – not seen
ngc 7331 – seen with averted vision
ngc 7332 – not seen
ngc 7814 – not seen
M39 seen
M42 seen
veil eastern seen
North American seen
tried UHC filter baader from Mark in 1 eyepiece in binos abs made nebula stand out
bed at 3:52am due to fog and 9deg c
looked at M81 and M82 through Keith’s 18”
could not see horse head
M42 WOW!! and M43 both through 13m Ethos 100 deg and then 21m Ethos
19:21 – 21:00
NGC 6765
Focus 18,406
imaged for 1hour 36 mins and then the safety went off and it stopped imaging, no idea if the dome closed at that point or if it just lost a guide star but that was it, despite it being clear all night. So I need to not set the Boltwood OK to image setting in SGPro and I need to find a way of time stamping the dome closure
20:55-00:11
Kelt 16b
Focus 20,329, taken with Luminance filter rather than red
GAIN 75 OFFSET 12 -25℃
Rotator Angle 29.420
Dome stopped at 582 images so need to see how many good ones I got
Clarity got worse from 1:18am until 3:52am when it clouded over, imaging is no good just before 1:15am so mid transit
| Kelt-16b Observ. Priority: LOW Total obs. (Recent): 35 (5) O-C minutes: 0.6±0.21 | RA/DEC J2000 20:57:04.4386 +31:39:39.629 | MagR mag 11.601 | DepthR mmag 14.77 | Duration hours 2.49 |
| 2021/10/01 22:36 Alt: 65° Azi: 228° (SW) | 1h Before Ingress 2021/10/01 23:36 Alt: 57° Azi: 249° (W) | Transit Start 2021/10/02 00:51 Alt: 45° Azi: 266° (W) | Mid Transit 2021/10/02 02:05 Alt: 34° Azi: 280° (W) | Transit End 2021/10/02 03:05 Alt: 25° Azi: 291° (W) |
| Max counts increase during observation: R:0% V:0% Moon illumination: 22.5%, Moon distance: 126.5° Observing times [ UTC+1.0 ] and target position |
20:46 – 21:39
NGC 6765, second attempt
22:35 – 23:45
Focus position 18464
Temp -25℃
Gain 139 Offset 21
OIII LRGB 20 x each, 600s on OIII and L and then 300s on RGB
Rotation angle 29.420
NGC 6765 planetary nebula in Lyra
Everything up until 23:45 is Luminance as the filter wheel was not connected correctly in SGPro and it thought it was moving but did not…..
Went to bed
Looks like it clouded over around midnight so a few images only. I also now seem to have a mark on the Luminance filter at the bottom which is a pain, not sure how that got there on a closed system. Also the scope must have moved during the imaging as a few of the images are of a different FoV.
21:32 – 06:07
M71 Globular Cluster.
Focus position 14,563
Rotator Position 29.420
Temp -22℃
Gain 75 Offset 12
LRGB started at 22:14
Focuser position on last image 16,636
17:35 – 22:15
Opened dome early to cool down, we then had some cloud and it closed, so reopen around 8pm.
As it has been a very warm day, some 28℃ and is still 20℃s, I will set the camera temp to -20℃ and image a different object to avoid several sets of flats, darks and flat darks. I settled on M56 as I had not imaged this for my Messier catalogue yet.
Loads of problems, mount kept saying it was not unpacked, guider would not connect, so rebooted and all fine.
Imaging at 22:10
Gain 75 Offset 12
Rotation angle 29.420
Temp -22 (need correct Flats/Darks and Dark Flats)
When I rebooted I noticed the PHD2 setting are wrong for the guider so need to change the profile to include DirectGuide not Pulse Guide. Also need to change SGPro so that it does not autofocus at the start of a run, also so it does not set the temp to -15.
Off to bed at 22:15 and left it running.
Everything went well, the dome shut at sunrise and the images look ok, maybe slightly soft focus but only when I process will I be able to tell.
21:19 – xx:xx
Palomar 10
Angle 139.520
LRGB taken, the first set were fine then the dome closed but SGPro kept on imaging as I forgot to set the safety, so I will need to dispose of a number of images.
22:00 – xx:xx
Quick look at the Bat nebula given there is a break in the clouds. I had trouble with a guide star due to as hot pixel so I had to move the scope slightly to move the guide star. I need to take a some new darks for the off axis guider.
I tried 2 regions within the Bat nebula given its size, but neither showed any signs of nebula on a single 10min exposure.
I then tried Lynds Dark Nebula, LDN 1082 The Seahorse. |However again due to the expanse of this object a small portion was only available in the 12″ so again this will be more suited to the Esprit.
I then went for Palomar 10, a Globular cluster in Sagtta.
22:14 – 00:52
RGB on SH2 – 132.
RGB focus 19,098, Temp -25℃ GAIN 139 OFFSET 21 , Rotator angle 256.020
Changed rotator angle to find guide star, must remember to force a calibration within PHD2 straight after so that the guiding works.
@ 00:45 LRGB on M15.
Lum focus 20,098, RGB focus 19,098, Temp -25℃ GAIN 139 OFFSET 21, Rotator angle 139.520
Left the observatory running at 00:52 and went to bed.
Forgot to set the Very Light safety limit so dome did not close when the Sun came up……
Need to do flats!!
22:00 – 04:00
After a long day of building the new astronomy building with a few friends, I opened the dome on this clear night and start off by imaging SH2 132 until midnight for which I grabbed 18 x 600s Ha images at Gain 139 Offset 21 and temp of -25℃. I then switched to SH2 183 and went to bed.
On waking this morning I realised I got 22 x 600s Ha images at Gain 139 Offset 21 and temp -25℃ before the clouds rolled in ands the dome shut around 4am. The seeing was particularly good as can be seen from the satellite image from skippy sky.com
19:32 – 22:54
Opened dome.
Grafana dashboard was not reporting anything from AAG, this turned out to be a bug in the code from Gingergeek which he will fix. First image from the camera came out blank from SGPro, restarted a new image and problem went away. Started imaging SH2 132 but clouds rolled in.
Dome closed
21:22 – 03:50
Another clear night whilst I am on holiday and after a long day of building the new warm room for my astronomy hobby. I finally got the camera imaging some more 600s Ha frames of the Sharpless 132 emission nebula in Cepheus (11 subs). The challenge was SGPro misbehaving and not plate solving. I used Gingergeek to look at it but he could not work out the problem either. So I used TSX to slew and solve instead before heading back into SGPro to start capturing data. I ran a set of Ha Flats before I moved to the next object at Rotator Angle 256.020, focus position 18500.
I then moved to SH2 183 another emission nebula in Cepheus. I let this running for the rest of the night whilst I went to bed at 00:47 during which time it took 19 images until more cloud lost the guide star which I need to fix so it restarts automatically.
I also worked out that plate solving was an SGPro bug as restarting SGPro allowed the plate solving to start working again, so useful for next time.
Observing conditions check. This morning I reviewed the environmental data and the conditions were fairly poor so I will redo the data. The Moon was just past full. The ASC video shows wispy cloud all night. The sky temperature was bumping around -13-14 degrees all night where -18 degrees is considered clear.
