Imaging Session – 15th Dec 2021

First clear night in a few weeks – very damp, bright moon and not particularly good seeing, but I set a couple of rigs up and gave it a go. Not the best session I’ve had, but every day’s a learning day….

Setup 1: Esprit 120/ZWO ASI 533 on the SW EQ6R looking at … never actually got to that bit

• Polar Aligned using QHY Polemaster
• Set up the target plan in Sequence Generator Pro.
• Ran Auto Focus – 73751 at HFR 1.7

• Slew to target, then plate sove to exact position
• Started PHD2 – initially fine then the RA decided to go on a walkabout!

Spent the rest of the evening adjusting setting and tweaking wires etc. Still not sure what the issue is – so far, from trawling the forums it could be:

• No dark map
• Imaging near zenith can be problematic
• Damaged cable (just ordered a new one)
• Out of date ASCOM drivers, but all seem to be okay

… and as it was all working perfectly a few weeks ago I’m going with either the seeing, a hot pixel or bad cable.

Setup 2: WO Z61/ZWO ASI 183 on the IOptron CEM25P looking at NGC 6992 Veil Nebula

• Polar Aligned using ASIAir
• Autofocus – 3377

• Select target – NGC 6992 Veil Nebula
• Slew, platesolve, check framing and set run of 100 x 120sec
• !!! forgot to turn on dew heaters!!

…so out of around 2 hrs of imaging I managed to salvage just under an hour before the lens looked like it had been in a sauna!

This was the result of 21 light frames of 2 mins – total of 42mins