Started setup around 1700. Another good night for clear skies and no moon. The forecast is clear skies, sunset 1928 and moonset at 18:25, waning crescent, not that it matters. Setup is going really quickly now, only took me about 20 minutes to level and rough Polar align the mount. Tonight will be first light for the ED80 .85 reducer/flattener with the Canon mounted to it instead of the tube ring mount point. The OTA is the Sky Watcher EvoStar 80 ED APO doublet. I’m hoping using the OTA will allow live view on the camera to function tonight on the night sky, last night I had to use the street light but that was using the 135mm telephoto lens. Tonight, I want to work on targeting using APT plate solving in conjunction with Stellarium. Because of my neighbor’s security light and the street light only 100 feet away from it, my night vision is pretty much useless. I know I am going to need to invest in goo LP filter, I’m looking at the Optolong L-Pro Light Pollution Telescope 2″ Camera Filter. I’ve got in cash back rewards on my credit card to order it.
Well, imaging for the night was a bust. First, the PC on the mount started acting goofy. Disconnecting and disappearing from the network. This went on for about 30 minutes before I finally figured out that the damn thing was having issues staying connected to my phone’s hotspot, it was only two feet away. When I moved the phone next to it, everything steadied up. Going to change from 5GHz to 2.4Gz and see if that will make things steady while not having to be right on top of it
Then when I trying to get things focused with the camera, clouds blew in. I sat out for about an hour and half before the clouds cleared. Then the camera wouldn’t turn back on. I tried both batteries and neither would fire it up. I was worried that it had gotten fried somehow but when I put a camera battery in it, it fired up. So now I need to troubleshoot the USB power adapter. Now that the camera was working again, I couldn’t get Live Focus to function on the camera. Finally, Jupiter appeared from behinds the clouds and I got focused on that using Live Focus, worked like a charm, just need something really bright. And my Bortle 5 skies with my neighbor’s security light and street light just drown any star light out. Once I got focused, I saw my alignment was way off. Jupiter was drifting like it wasn’t tracking, I checked and confirmed sidereal tracking was turned on. I’m not sure what happened yet. I’m wondering if the GPS coordinates got thrown off somehow.
This is what a lousy alignment looks like, I’m familiar with the elongated blobs of light, I was wondering what they were back in January. Those are Jupiter’s Galilean moons.
The night wasn’t a total loss though, I learned not to mount the camera until at least one finder was lined up. I also learned to align the mount before mounting the camera as well since finders and eyepieces are needed for that. I worked in the dark to swap out the camera with a diagonal and eyepiece so I could get things lined up. Then swapped everything back in again. I need to add some red flashlights to my kit as well as a red lantern to help working in the dark. I also learned to bring out a fan, one it kept me cool but more importantly it kept the skeeters off of me. So while the night was a disappointment, it wasn’t a total loss.
I checked USB power adapter for the camera, it’s functioning, not sure what happened. Probably had it plugged in wrong some how. I also just finished checking the coordinates on the mount. I had saved them before breaking down for the night. They were missing the last two digits for both N and W coordinates, that would explain the crappy alignment.
Well, it looks like tomorrow night might not be as cooperative as tonight was for clear skies, we’ll see. Bossier is looking good for both Friday and Saturday next weekend. Moonset is 2159 and 2238. Hope to get in some star gazing at Brian and Terri’s place in Elm Grove, the sky there is Bortle 4 and if I recall, there is only the one security light at their next door neighbor’s house, I can set up on the opposite side away from it.