Ever Have One of Those Nights?

[JonCarleton]

I've been doing a lot of beta testing with software of late, ever trying to optimize my setup and help where I can as new "stuff" is available.  Lots of good stuff, but alas, all the reconfiguration and adaptations has my setup in a bit of disarray.  Last night, we had one of the first really clear nights we have had in recent memory.  So, let's put the scope outside and brave the mosquitoes!  Maybe grab a few Messier objects we haven't managed yet....

Well, not so much.  Some of the new tracking software betas didn't exactly hold tracking without a guide scope (I really have to start using one).  I switched to another "stable" version, and had similar luck, so I undid everything and went back to the Android Tablet driving SynScan.  Depending on where you are looking, drift can be a problem, but it can usually find a deep sky object with a decent alignment.

Well again, not so much.  It was getting late and we still didn't have an image, so we opted for the Anglefish Globular Cluster, as it was in a good spot and fairly bright.  Only a real dumbbell could mess that up, right?

I did manage to find a smudgy gray image in the finder scope, not quite where I though it should be, but close.  When I realized what it was, I had to take a few pictures.  Drift was pretty bad on the mount driven by Synscan, so I couldn't get long exposures.  I didn't even bother to get darks because I knew that it wouldn't stack well.  The lesson here is, don't be a dumbbell!  If your stuff is working, don't mess with it!

 

Edited July 15, 2020 by JonCarleton