For the first time, everything went flawlessly.  I had initial set up done in about 10 minutes, that’s become easy since I bundled the cabling and mounted the PC to the OTA..  APT has three memory positions for the focuser.  I set one to the focus point where it was at from my previous session.  I used it tonight and HFD measurements stars were almost perfect, I made a couple of adjustments and that was done.  NINA TPPA worked perfectly and I was polar aligned in about 5 minutes.  I confirmed guide scope was focused and moved back to IC_1805 and started imaging at astronomical darkness.

Sunset was at 17:11 and with moonrise at 20:21 with illumination at 84.7%. I started imaging at Astro twilight end at 18:36.

To prevent another occurrence of a camera crash on the mount, I tried using APT’s Automated Meridian Flip procedure, it failed miserably since it could not plate solve.  It’s an issue with the exposure and ISO settings that I need to figure out because of the filter.  So I waited until after the flip time, plate solved the last image taken and did a Go To, plate solved again the last image, did another Go To and things looked good when I took a manual shot, other than everything is flipped 180 degrees now.

The image run ended with no issues, I did learn that I can image to the northwest down to about 30 degrees before the tree line in that area of the yard starts to obstruct the scope, good to know.  I can see from about 300 degrees to 45 degrees starting at about 30 altitude.  From 45 degrees to 130 degrees, the altitude changes to about 45 before the view is unobstructed. And from 130 to 190 the altitude is between 50 to 55.  From 190 to 300 the altitude is about 75.

I got 77 subs total with 20 subs in DSD time and combined with last night’s 33 that gives me 110, just over nine hours on target with the Heart Nebula.  Now that I have an idea what the view is around the yard, I can start planning automated sessions once I resolve the automated flip routine with APT.  I’m pretty sure I know what the issue is there, so I should have that resolved soon enough.

Clear Skies!