SESSION 24 · 11/26 · WORKED
A Saturn worth keeping
Saturn on the 127 with the ZWO, at 20 ms and gain 335, near its highest. The planet drifted out of the frame all night even with tracking on, and the stacker had to chase it. Twenty-four recordings…
STARLOG · GEAR
127 mm Maksutov
Logged on 11 nights. No gear write-up yet.
SESSION 23 · 10/26 · WORKED
First light for the ZWO
First night with the ZWO ASI662MC, on the 127 Mak with the SV205 moved to the finder. Saturn came out soft in sixteen recordings, which I blamed on my focus; the numbers said seeing. After midnight…
SESSION 22 · 10/26 · WORKED
The setting Moon from the back yard
Two nights in one entry. 26/10 clouded out. On 27/10 the Moon came up behind the verandah and into cloud, and an 8x5 at 23:00 got the lower two thirds before power lines blacked it out. At dawn…
SESSION 21 · 10/26 · WORKED
The whole Moon in one piece
A day before full, on the 127 Mak and the AZ-GTi, in wind. The laptop ran out of power mid-session and the mount found the Moon again from where it had stopped. A 7x5 mosaic at 14 ms and a patch…
SESSION 20 · 10/26 · DIDN'T WORK
A gibbous Moon, and a grid that would not stay on it
A 91% gibbous Moon on the 127 Mak and the AZ-GTi. The finder-to-Mak offset from last week worked first time, focus was good and one 300-frame run stacked cleanly. Then three mosaic attempts in forty…
SESSION 19 · 10/26 · PARTLY WORKED
Two half-misses make one Moon, and Saturn in the wrong hole
The best sky of the spring. Two 43-panel lunar mosaics on the AZ-GTi, 128 GB each, every goto within two arcseconds, but each grid missed most of the Moon; stitched together, the two make a complete…
SESSION 18 · 10/26 · PARTLY WORKED
The helper ran out halfway through
Codex rebuilt a lot of rig-ui during the day and helped drive the evening until its usage limit cut it off at 20:04. I shot the 7x4 mosaic myself at 20:28. It ran to 25 panels, but the grid sat too…
SESSION 17 · 10/26 · WORKED
Saturn in colour, with AstroDMx
An AstroDMx night with the 127 on the AZ-GTi and no agent driving: 38 runs of 50 full-size frames, the crescent from 19:29 and Saturn from 21:19. Codex could not reach the rig from its sandbox and…
SESSION 16 · 10/26 · PARTLY WORKED
Thirty-five panels, and a dimming I never explained
The 127 on the AZ-GTi, run from the mount's hotspot. A 35-panel crescent mosaic at 19:44, anchored 11 arcminutes off the disc centre with a new shift option; a second, softer one after the image…
SESSION 15 · 10/26 · PARTLY WORKED
The Moon in the 127, found by eye
A night of near misses with the 127 and the AZ-GTi: the mount's WiFi link lost half its packets, the house power went out, the finder-to-Mak offset turned out to be more than a degree and a…
SESSION 14 · 10/26 · PARTLY WORKED
First light for the 127, with the mount asleep
The 127 Mak's first frames of sky: an 8% crescent at 15 degrees, hand-pointed and untracked, craters along the terminator in a 50-frame PNG run. The AZ-GTi never spoke to the laptop all night - its…