Imaging tonight?

[Fay]

it was a nice evening lkast night. I got 11x600 of M16. I could not stay out longer as I had to go out early today. bit worn out but have setup again tonight with 50mm lens. it was darkish until 10.15 last night.

[Carole]

Kept getting USB dropouts

That's funny, as I got a couple of those last night as well.  Tried to move the mount to next object from desktop upsatirs and it just wouldn't move the mount.  Went out to Obsy and wouldn't work there either, had to disconnect CdC and EQmod and start it up again.  Then my DSLR disconnected itself.  So much for trying to do stuff remotely, I still had to go out and sort it out.

Carole

[The Thing]

I cured DSLR and QHY5 disconnects by using a powered hub. The mount uses the EQDIR with Prolific chipset which shows up as COM5 on my laptop. I have just installed a different Prolific driver (WDM version) ready for more trials...

---------It worked!-------

My Lakeside Focuser controller is also having serial connection issues (FTDI this time), works fine in lappy USB but not in the hub!!! Annoying. Want it all sorted for Friday.

[MarkS]

I've had a cold the last few days so I've missed a couple of good nights.  I'm still not really up to it so I'm not using a scope tonight - just the Canon with 35mm lens on EQ6 to take a few subs of the Milky Way.  It's a really good sky tonight with the Milky Way just about discernible to the naked eye right down to the horizon, next to the Teapot - SQM reading 21.05 at zenith.

The previous SQM reading I took was 29 March.  So this is my first imaging in almost 4 months!!

A raw 3 min ISO 800 exposure looking almost directly south.  Canon 400D 35mm F/4.


Mark

[Rocket Pooch]

Yipeee 1st summer image.

[Fay]

hope you feel a bit better Mark. it is not long since your last cold. i would like to do the Milky Way, with Canon, nice Mark

[mickw]

Cool

[The Thing]

Dead cool

[julian]

Nice one Mark.
Looks like a good set up for the perseids.

[MarkS]

Tonight just didn't compare with last night.

At zenith the SQM reading was slightly worse at 20.8 (instead of 21.05) but the transparency was nowhere near as good - visually it lacked impact.  Down near the horizon I couldn't even discern the Teapot or the main stars of Scorpio, let alone the Milky Way.

I tried some imaging the same field of view with the CLS filter but it really was a waste of time.

It just goes to show that the SQM reading does not tell the whole story.   It's quite possible for a sky to be quite dark but have abominable transparency.