A lot of high thin clouds moving across the sky but it has been a bit since I have been able to look up so I decided to get the SeeStar out. It was a lot warmer than it has been (well above freezing), fairly dry, and no Moon. I collected a bit of light from Messier 45. I had originally planned to do a mosaic of M 81 and M 82, but there were too many clouds in that area of the sky.

Equipment and Software
	ZWO SeeStar S50 on a CG5 Tripod with an external power bank.
	Simple SeeStar Controller with SeeStar Alp on a Raspberry Pi
	3×3 SeeStar Alp Mosaic, Individual Panels stacked by SeeStar, Mosaic Processed with PixInsight

Messier 45, the Pleiades, is an asterism of open stars in the constellation of Taurus. This open cluster is about 444 light years from Earth making it the nearest Messier object to Earth. M45 is easily visible to the naked eye. The Pleiades is sometimes also called the Seven Sisters.

This is a 3×3 Mosaic, 9 panels total, of M45. Each panel is around 10 minutes of 10 second exposures. Mosaic assembled, cropped, background extraction, denoised, and stretched in PixInsight.

Things started off pretty well, with not a lot of dropped frames, but then some clouds started moving across the sky and the SeeStar started dropping frames. I had the Mosaic configured to take 15 minutes per panel, but ended up between 6 and 13 minutes each. I just did get it all, a 4×4 panel would have probably been better. Still not bad for 10 minutes, give or take, on each panel with high clouds moving across the sky.

While PixInsight was stitching together the mosaic panels, the sky in the NE had cleared a bit so I pointed the SeeStar towards M 81. Messier 81, or Bode’s Galaxy, is a grand design spiral galaxy in the constellation of Ursa Major. This is a SeeStar stack of 80 x 10 seconds processed with PixInsight.

Not a bad night despite the clouds.