Exploring the Suffolk Virginia Night Sky – Astronomy, Astrophotography, Telescopes, EAA – Planets and Stars and Nebula and Galaxies – Looking, Learning, Sharing… Let's see what we can see…
We got a fair bit of snow, especially for here, but the storm is gone and the sky is clear. I set the gear back up on the driveway for some EAA. It was cold, 21 F, after dark. When I set the scope back up I left off the Stellarvue 80. I had a number of problems first with focus and then with the polar alignment, and did I mention it was cold.
I had a weird issue with the SV305 which I have not had before… when I disconnect and stop the profile from Ekos, if I restart the profile the camera would not reconnect until I restarted the drivers on the INDI Server. Not sure why this was happening but I recently updated KStars/Ekos/INDI on the client machine, so maybe that has something to do with it. Anyway… it was too cold to troubleshoot that, I just had to remember to restart the INDI Server drivers anytime I switched between clients.
Due to the issues with focus and the alignment I was outside for a lot longer than I was expecting. Once I worked out all the issues, I was able to head back inside to get warm.
M67 – Open cluster in the constellation of Cancer. Live stack of 60 x 5 second exposures at 450 gain.
M93 – Open cluster in the constellation Puppis. Live stack of 50 x 6 second exposures at 300 gain.
NGC 457 – The Owl Cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia. Live stack of 50 x 8 second exposures at 350 gain.
I have probably mentioned this before, but The Owl Cluster is one of my favorites to observe both through EAA and visually. This is my favorite capture of the night.
M66 – A spiral galaxy in the constellation of Leo. Live stack of 50 x 10 second exposures at 400 gain.
Leo was really low in the eastern part of the sky, and some clouds moved in as I was observing. I tried to get some time on M65 since it is right next to M66 but when the clouds moved in I decided it was time to pack it up.
Even though it took me a bit longer than I expect to get my gear set up, and my polar alignment is not perfect (it was too cold for perfect). It turned out to be a pretty decent night and I am adding 3 more objects to the Messier Log.
