{"id":1501,"date":"2021-09-05T00:30:57","date_gmt":"2021-09-05T05:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/?p=1501"},"modified":"2021-09-05T01:30:06","modified_gmt":"2021-09-05T06:30:06","slug":"21-09-04-imaging-session-first-light-85-reducer-flattener-what-a-bummer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/?p=1501","title":{"rendered":"21-09-04 \u2013 Imaging session \u2013 First Light .85 reducer\/flattener \u2013 What a bummer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Started setup around 1700.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Setup is going really quickly now, only took me about 20 minutes to level and rough Polar align the mount.\u00a0 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\u2019m 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.\u00a0 Tonight, I want to work on targeting using APT plate solving in conjunction with Stellarium.\u00a0 Because of my neighbor\u2019s security light and the street light only 100 feet away from it, my night vision is pretty much useless.\u00a0 I know I am going to need to invest in goo LP filter, I\u2019m looking at the Optolong L-Pro Light Pollution Telescope 2″ Camera Filter.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got in cash back rewards on my credit card to order it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, imaging for the night was a bust.\u00a0 First, the PC on the mount started acting goofy.\u00a0 Disconnecting and disappearing from the network.\u00a0 This went on for about 30 minutes before I finally figured out that the damn thing was having issues staying connected to my phone\u2019s hotspot, it was only two feet away.\u00a0 When I moved the phone next to it, everything steadied up.\u00a0 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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then when I trying to get things focused with the camera, clouds blew in.\u00a0 I sat out for about an hour and half before the clouds cleared. Then the camera wouldn\u2019t turn back on.\u00a0 I tried both batteries and neither would fire it up.\u00a0 I was worried that it had gotten fried somehow but when I put a camera battery in it, it fired up.\u00a0 So now I need to troubleshoot the USB power adapter.\u00a0 Now that the camera was working again, I couldn\u2019t get Live Focus to function on the camera.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And my Bortle 5 skies with my neighbor\u2019s security light and street light just drown any star light out.\u00a0 Once I got focused, I saw my alignment was way off.\u00a0 Jupiter was drifting like it wasn\u2019t tracking, I checked and confirmed sidereal tracking was turned on.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what happened yet.\u00a0 I\u2019m wondering if the GPS coordinates got thrown off somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what a lousy alignment looks like, I\u2019m familiar with the elongated blobs of light, I was wondering what they were back in January. Those are Jupiter’s Galilean moons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The night wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t a total loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Started setup around 1700.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[166,152,154,165],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1501"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1512,"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions\/1512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gifnet.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}