Waking up after the summer break

[old_eyes]

I have made a number of changes to my rig and observatory over the last couple of months as we lost the astronomical dark.

Saturday night was beautiful after a hot sunny day, so I thought why not fire everything up and see what works and what needs sorting out?

So I started everything, found one dodgy 12V cable, replaced it and downloaded drivers for recently acquired mono camera and filterwheel. Fed info on new equipment into NINA and hit go.

To my delight and astonishment, everything worked! Mount slewed to North America nebula, autofocused, platesolved and centred, took five 120 sec Lum subs, switched to Ha filter and another 5 x 120.

I know that is how it is supposed to work, but I am absurdly pleased that it did. Nothing ever works first time for me. I suspect the astrophotography gods will have their revenge next time.

In honour of this unique event, here is an integration of the 5x120 sec luminance. No bias, no darks, no flats. Just pure pleasure in success. I know - my bar is set very low 😄