The Summer Solstice, 6/20/25, was two days ago as I sit down to write this out. That did not even enter into my head when I started setting up the gear for their First Light and my return to actual astronomy and not just tech in over a year and a half later on that day. Coincidence, who knows, the mind can play strange tricks on itself.
The shop is powered up though in balmy Louisiana it needs an AC unit, I have a vortex wind fan sitting next to me that does a decent job. It really is a big warm room 12×20 and it keeps the skeeters out.
I began the day of the 20th by picking out the location for the mount. The 15×15 pad is available for use but it is quite a bit of distance away from the shop. So, I laid out three paver stones and set up about 30 feet back from my home about 45 feet from the shop, the pad is closer to 150 feet. I have a 360-degree 30-degree angle FOV from pretty much anywhere I want to set up. I had some trees removed from the place that give that to me now. The location I picked has good dispersion from my neighbor’s security light, the only light in the area, and it’s almost due west, other than the slight sky glo from my tiny township of about 1000 almost due north. I’m going to have to fill in some of the natural barrier with additional ever green pines to help mitigate in the winter. My neighbor to the east did not turn on their back door porch light the entire weekend; they hit me like a deer caught in the head lights when they pulled in Friday night, about an hour after sundown. Coincidence, who knows, good neighbors, most likely.
After trying to balance the Z73 with the new filter wheel and camera on the AZ-EQ5, I decided to run it setup the NYX-101. Nice thing about harmonic mounts, balancing the load is not required, as long as your load is within its max guideline, 20Kg, though it is recommended when the unit is off in the Azimuth axis, no break. I replaced the Canon 6D I normally shoot with my new QHYCCD 268M and a ZWO 7 position filter wheel. Once I calibrated guiding, my total error was about .16, guiding was normally well within a pixel, even for the 99% humidity!
Night 1, the 20th. Finally, nautical twilight came to an end at 21:21 local, so and I fired up the mount and camera. First pic with the camera a 5 second sub with light still in the sky and it cut through it; you could see some stars. I was amazed, the Canon would have been a solid pink still. It was about 20 minutes later that the camera started taking images that were plate solvable. That was still 19 minutes before astro twilight ended at 21:59. So, using APT, I was able to polar align within a few moments and was able to create a 6-pt. pointing model before DSD actually started.
So, for the target, I initially chose the Blue Horsehead nebula, also known as IC4592.
IC 4592 is a reflection nebula in the constellation Scorpius. It has a distinctive horsehead shape. The blue light comes from fine dust reflecting the light of nearby stars. In this case, much of the reflected light comes from the star at the eye of the horse called “Nu Scorpii”.
I’ve been wanting to image that one since I first found it around three and half years ago but was unable to since there were trees blocking that portion of my southeastern view. While my primary passion with the hobby is AP, I do like to observe, when there aren’t any skeeters around. However, my eyes aren’t the greatest, so I am adding EAA to that passion, a subset of AP. The 268M proves to quite adapt for this particular avenue since the subs I was running a LRGB 30 second plan to start. I’ll have to figure out a stacking app for all four and combining it into one color image, PixInsight! Research time. I need to figure out PixInsight since I gave up the Adobe subscription when I bought the license for it
I could see some vague details in the center of the luminance image; however, I did not keep any of the data from that session. I was having problems with the filter wheel and did not realize it wasn’t changing so I had a whole bunch of luminance images, oh well. Workflows change with new equipment and lessons learned. That first night was full of equipment issues as I was expecting it to be with first light out and a fresh new imaging rig. First, was when I lost the filter wheel, a cable snag and one ripped UHB-B cable. Two cables later and a bounce of the USB port and we’re back to imaging again. Once everything was running again, gremlins came out, the mount started to report 0 for all attributes. No more moving! Enough of the bad data for the Blue Horsehead Nebula, it will be there later. That was when I deleted the data and shut everything down for the night, that was about 3:00am
Night 2, the 21st. I made some adjustments to the tripod, not particularly fond of the carbon fiber tripod, while it is super light, it’s too easy to move, I’m used to the Sky Watcher tripods. So, I reran the polar alignment again with APT and got things up relatively quickly with the 6 pt plan. My focus was still good from the previous night. So, NGC_6820 I decided on a small emission nebula, Ha region
NGC 6820 is a small emission nebula near the open cluster NGC 6823 in Vulpecula. The reflection nebula and cluster are embedded in a large faint emission nebula called Sh 2-86. The whole area of nebulosity is often referred to as NGC 6820.
M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, is found three degrees to the east, and α Vulpeculae three degrees to the west.
Open star cluster NGC 6823 is about 50 light-years across and lies about 6,000 light-years away. The center of the cluster formed about two million years ago and is dominated in brightness by a host of bright young blue stars. Outer parts of the cluster contain even younger stars. It forms the core of the Vulpecula OB1 stellar association.
So, I ran a 30 second LRGB plan and added an additional Ha subs 180 seconds. Not EAA, however, the LRGB images qualify. Again, EAA on an AP imaging run, cool. I’m an automation developer and have been professionally for 13 years now as a subset of responsibilities in my current position. And have developed remote image selection and combination as far back as 1991, now that is a fond memory. GifPreview, any ways…That is a whole different astronomy project!
Both nights, the guiding was interesting to say the least, for you see, I had 99% humidity! When it guided, it guided to well within a pixel, which for the most part was most of the night. We all hate the bing, bing of PHD Guiding, star mass loss. Data is not the greatest, but it is worth some sort of processing, by visual image watching APT take the individual subs, that’s my real EAA right now at this point, the image preview screen from APT. if not to publish the pic to at least start to learn the new workflow with PixInsight. Time will tell in that regard as I write this out Sunday evening, work in the AM, like most of us, when I can get to try and process the data.
These reports will turn more and more like a traditional visual astronomy report once my workflow has been established. But to say the least, I do believe I’m back to imaging again from an 18-month hiatus. And oddly enough on the Summer Solstice, of all days!
Clear Skies,
Chris