Out of practice?

[Tim]

Do you ever get the feeling you get out of the habit of astronomy?

These days my astronomy is very simple and goes like this;

1) go up to the little obsy

2) Turn on the computers and open the roof

3) Select a target, start the cameras and press GO.

4) go back in the house and monitor progress from my phone

5) Sleep between target switches and use an alarm to wake myself up.

Typically I will spend several nights on the trot imaging on target, I like to get in as close as possible in the UK and image at a long focal length and at F10, so getting enough pictures for a nice end result does take some time.

Now I know it has hardly been clear at all this year, but I have had some sessions, mostly shorter ones of two or three hours or so.

So last night I left the kit rolling and went to bed at around 01.30. The alarm went at 02.30 and kind of on auto pilot I must have gone up to the obsy, closed everything down, locked up, and gone to bed.

It was only this morning that I realised that it was clear all night and that I could have spent another 2 hours at least on my main target (B33) and then moved to another as well

Think i'm going to have to re-educate myself in the ways of the dark side, fancy wasting most of a night like that, especially given the weather we've had this year :s

Oh well, upwards and onwards, looks like a brief clear spell will be available tonight, should be able to add a few more subs to the M76 close up perhaps.

How do you guys/gals get on if you haven't been out much for a while? Do you find yourselves a bit rusty?

Cheers

Tim

[Lorne]

With me purely into visual, the worst I have to worry about is re familiarising myself with the sky, something that was in an area of sky a few weeks before will have moved a good bit! Not really a big deal mind you

[OutThereSomewhere]

Very rusty with my SCT. Usually I use an NEQ6, so tonight I've set up my Celestron and am thinking about the differences between the Celestron handset and the Skywatcher handset for when I 3 star align. Hopefully I'l take some webcam video of the moon through it and use SharpCap, which will be a totally new experience for me....

....if I can beat the clouds!

[LukeSkywatcher]

If i have not moved my gear outside and setup in a while (read that as a few weeks).......i do find that i am almost starting over again, getting used to the moving of gear and setup. It quickly becomes second nature again.

[Tim]

Yep, you pretty much need to be able to do things in your sleep almost, gotta retrain my brain to prefer imaging to sleeping

[Marki]

In some ways the weather has been so poor this year, plus I've moved house, so that I haven't really developed a habit as yet . Hoping to get one though... (stares angrily at clouds) .

[Sam]

My setup is not so automated yet but I find after not having used the kit for a few months it takes a while to remember which order to do everything in, occasionally I stuff it up and miss something out and then spend ages trouble shooting.

[Atlas]

I've managed to become more efficient. With the horrible cloud patterns the last few weeks... I've learned to setup everything in under 4 minutes, to snap Jupiter during the cloud gaps that randomly develop. My biggest concern will be the ice on the patio this winter. I'll need to be vigilant in keeping up with the salt dumping so I don't break my neck during a set up rush.