Last night the forecast was reasonably promising. It was supposed to start out partly cloudy but then clear. As dusk approached I noticed my neighbor decided to start a large fire in their backyard. Even worse, the thick smoke was headed right over my observatory.
It turned out not to matter, as the clouds took their good time to leave the area. Around midnight, it finally cleared enough to start. The first couple subs looked horrible with the stars completely out of round despite good tracking. I tracked it down to my dew shield that was slightly out of place. About 12:30 I started getting good subs. The problem was my target, Markarian's chain with Messier 84 and Messier 86 was due to go behind my Black Walnut tree about 2:00 am. I ended up with 18 good 5 minute subs.
I then switched over to trying Messier 20. I need not have bothered. It was down low in the murk and the seeing was horrible. Even worse, I needed to remove some dew and it took quite a while for the system to stabilize. I did get a few subs, but even they weren't great.
Here is the start of Messier 84 and 86 together with the Eyes and other members of the chain gang. I'm hoping I can gather some more data tonight.
It turned out not to matter, as the clouds took their good time to leave the area. Around midnight, it finally cleared enough to start. The first couple subs looked horrible with the stars completely out of round despite good tracking. I tracked it down to my dew shield that was slightly out of place. About 12:30 I started getting good subs. The problem was my target, Markarian's chain with Messier 84 and Messier 86 was due to go behind my Black Walnut tree about 2:00 am. I ended up with 18 good 5 minute subs.
I then switched over to trying Messier 20. I need not have bothered. It was down low in the murk and the seeing was horrible. Even worse, I needed to remove some dew and it took quite a while for the system to stabilize. I did get a few subs, but even they weren't great.
Here is the start of Messier 84 and 86 together with the Eyes and other members of the chain gang. I'm hoping I can gather some more data tonight.