What'cha capturing tonight?

[Tracy]

Looks like a decent night for most of the night, so back to my old faithful of M101 and then NGC7023.
Doing the upgrade to StellarMate OS, so hope it works well. There is supposed to be a KStars update to the rotator that results in no more need to have pre/post meridian flip flats done.

 

[Tracy]

Back to M101 for about 2 hours (before meridian flip) and so so far, so good. The supernova is even showing up as the brightest object in the structure. Bad thing is, showing poor viewing for the next several days.... so I hope it stays nice and bright for a few weeks so I can get adequate capture data of it.

 

[Tracy]

And another decent night.... another 2 hours of M101 LRGB scheduled. Can't play all night though as I have to get up early tomorrow and celebrate my 39th anniversary with my wonderful spouse.

 

[Tracy]

I will be SO glad when these clouds decide to depart. We have a high over us right now, resulting in excessive temperatures. Normally this would also drive the clouds away.... but not so far!

About par for the course... the next scheduled clear nights the moon will be at around 50%.

 

[Tracy]

Turned into a decent (not great) night tonight, so have started on IC 5146 after setting the equipment up around 11PM. According to my app, we will have better nights for the next 3 days (but that's quickly subject to change).

 

[Tracy]

The target of choice for tonight... SH 2-162, the Bubble nebula.
Going to try to get about 7 hours combined of it over the next 2 nights and then processing it in SHO, HSO, and HOO.

May add a few initial captures of IC 1805 (Heart nebula) for later also.

 

[Tracy]

Grabbing some more of M51 since I have a very limited window now on it due to trees to my southeast. The bad thing is that the moon is near that target, so the brightness will have to be dealt with in processing compared to most of the other captures of that target.. Once I am done with it, I'll be grabbing some more of the Bubble nebula, then if I'm up some more of NGC 884 Double Cluster.

 

[Tracy]

Tonight I'm playing with the Apertura 72mm on the EQ6R Pro instead of the default EQ35 Pro. I have another EQ6R-Pro on order, so figured I'd start with my current kit and then use the new on the Z103 when it comes in.
So, tonight I grabbed about an hour of M51... now I'm working on NGC 7789 (Carolyns Rose)... currently sitting at 2 hours of capture... going to try for around 3.5 before I hit another target since I only have 4 hours until a meridian flip.

 

[Tracy]

Grabbing more of M16 and the Western Veil nebula while I can get them... both targets are very attractive. I try to grab some of M17 before the meridian flip... but it's getting so now that by the time I can do captures, it's already past meridian. So may have to wait until next year.... I have a rotator on the prime rig... but I have yet to develop a successful method of keeping up with pre/post meridian flips on all the targets I shoot since I do tend to move the rotator to put the target into the best position.

 

[Tracy]

Tonight we are back grabbing as much of M16 and the Western Veil nebula as we can. The rest of the week's forecast is for clouds and rain (possibly)... of course, that is to be expected as I have some new astro related hardware coming in.
Luckily I can grab about 1.5 hours of M16 each night (but on a mono, that's split amongst the filters) but at least with the Western Veil I can get about 3 hours each night.

 

[Tracy]

Nothing for the next few nights... have storms forecast, and not going to tempt fate by setting up. We can definitely use the rain though.
So, the next few days will be setting up inside and cleaning up the cable runs so the look a little nicer and don't affect the balance as bad.
Should be clear by next Tuesday, so going to see if some issues that cropped up with my last M16 captures on the Apertura got cleaned with some mount changes and equipment relocation.

 

[Tracy]

Back to hitting NGC 6960 with the Apertura, then when it finally went behind the trees started on M1. Really interested in seeing how M1 with a few hours of data from the 72mm refractor turns out. It's a fairly small target in the preview windows. I really don't think it's going to give a lot of structure at that size.

 

[Tracy]

Back to M16, NGC 6960 and then IC 1590 for the night. Trying to get as much of them in as I can before I lose good view of t hem. Think I'm up to about 25 hours total on NGC 6960 for both the ASI533MC Pro and the ASI533MM Pro. Time to reprocess that data to see how it's improved.
I dumped all my M16 for the ASI533MC Pro as I had a focuser issue that resulted in a large number of the captures being out of focus.

 

[Tracy]

More M16, IC 1590 and NGC 6960 for the night planned.
Have also set up the NexStar 8se and going to play with FireCapture and see if I can get some decent moon shots.