22:46 – 04:06
I let the dome running tonight on another run for NGC 5985, the galaxy line in Draco. Whilst I captured 60 images at 300s, quite a few of them were obscured by the dome which was caused by the dome being misaligned. I need to relook at why this is. Is the dome slipping? Is the dome at 1x sidereal rate, operated from the controller within the dome without a computer input somehow not tracking at the correct rate? I will investigate.
17:00 – 03:00
I received my new solar scope today, the Sky-Watcher 76Ha. It is superb! I setup and tested out with the 20mm eyepiece that ships with it. This is ok but the eye relief is very shallow and not great. I replaced this with my TeleVue 24mm Panoptic. The scope only takes 1.25″ and not 2″ which is a shame.
With the 24mm Panoptic the view is lovely and the eye relief is much better. I did try putting in the TeleVue barlow, however the eye relief once again becomes poor, despite the view and detail seen being much improved.
I can see filaments on the surface of the Sun. I can see granulation. I can also see many prominences today.
I then put my ZWO ASI290MC planetary cam in replacement for the eyepiece and refocused. This sensor is small and I could not get a fan disc, however what I saw with no processing was great, I now need to improve on it.
I have the scope mounted on the Sky-Watcher AZ GTi little mount that I bought off my friend Nigel. This is great for solar. I need to remember to setup the scope pointing towards Polaris roughly in the daytime sky before I turn on the mount, else it goes the wrong way, mainly pointing down.
Once I got the mount working with the the SyncScan Pro app, adjusting it was easy. However as I was slightly off Polaris, the scope does tend to drift. No matter, a few taps on the hand controller and it reenters well. All of this in preparation for the 12th August the partial eclipse of circa 93%.
Now the Sun has gone down I have opened the dome and have slewed to NGC 5985, a galaxy with other associated galaxies in Draco. This has been on my list here https://sites.google.com/site/shavewall/objects-to-image under Galaxies for a long while.
I started imaging at 22:57 and captured 46 images at 300s throughout the night. finishing at 3am.
