Went outside, last night, but not dark until about midnight, so no point unless one is prepared to sit up all night. It was nice & clear as well.
Yes I toyed with going out too, but there is so little darkness it's hardly worth setting up.
I only managed to get about 1 1/2 hours on 4.6.2010 by the time I aligned etc etc and there is even less time now.
Carole
Know how you feel Fay, I was up till the same time too.
Put all my kit back together last night (it's been in the back of the car since the last DSC) and did a PA using PoleAlignMax (Cherry tree masks Polaris so can't use the PA scope). Since it was going to be clear through the night I tried a feature of the Ascom mount driver to stop tracking at a set time. I started imaging at midnight and finished at 3am so managed to get quite a few 10 min subs. Unfortunately the PA wasn't set accurately enough so the result wasn't good but at least it proved the concept.
I must admit I was more than a bit concerned with the cloud cover when I woke up this morning, especially when the prediction was clear as a bell, but I may try this again in future if I can _garantee_ it won't rain. It's certainly an option to image during the week at this time of the year when work beckons early in the morning!
Robert
It was a very good sky - I got my best guiding ever: 0.11 pixel error RMS.
BUT my more accurately re-assembled Tak T-ring adaptor made actually made things much worse - this is becoming really tedious. There must be inaccuracies elsewhere also. However, I wasn't going to stay up all night mucking around with tinfoil shims.
I'm going to tackle that during the forthcoming clear nights ...
Well, I think it is good to get outside for practice. I had a few problems.....what's new, & it is important to do this
QuoteI got my best guiding ever: 0.11 pixel error RMS
At what focal length? i.e what does that equate to in terms of arcsec?
Robert
0.11 pixel on the QHY5 sitting on my usual 300mm guide lens. Pixel size is 5.2 microns.
This translates into 0.39 arcsec RMS