(Almost) everything went wrong, but I DID get a Leo Triplet image

[rickwayne]

I got to the park at 6:45, and set up for a little star party for my  friends  and some  imaging  on the side. The friend part went very nicely. The imaging...

I'd neglected to daylight-focus my DSLR on the long refractor, so I had NO IDEA where to start autofocusing. In fact I couldn't find any stars manually focusing. GRRR!

Fine.

Pull the DSLR off the Meade, unscrew my cool 3D-printed thread adapter so I could put the 183 and filter wheel on it. Or tried to. Absolutely would not budge. So, that telescope's done for the night, and so's that camera.

FINE. I am DETERMINED to GET A PICTURE tonight.

Take the Stellarvue off its visual mount. Don't have the appropriate weights for that scope -- wasn't planning on using  it on the CEM70, and I already had had a full car with four telescopes, one of them the massive 11" Dob. Screw in the flattener/reducer. Oh wait, no spacers. Backfocus will be maybe 20mm instead of 55.

FINE!

Autofocus pulley and belt are on the Meade. It's now almost eleven (the park closes then). Grab the Bahtinov mask. Get focused. Plate-solve to slew to...what do you mean, plate solving failed?  Dink with plate solving for half an hour.

FINE!

Tell the mount to do the slew. No galaxies visible. Dink around with nudge-and-shoot for another half an hour. Now looking nervously over my shoulder for the park rangers. Historically they never show up to kick me out before Memorial Day, but you never know.

FINE!!! Spend 15 minutes squinting down the tube, getting Regulus in the FOV. Sync the mount on Regulus. Tell it to slew to M65. What do you know, three galaxies! Check watch -- it's 0015. Still no ranger. Check focus again. Start guiding.  Fairly crappy -- only about 1" total RMS, which for this mount is pretty sad but for some unknown reason  I didn't feel like messing about trying to improve it this particular night. Start the sequence. I am just about falling over by now but by Bog I am LEAVING THIS PARK with a freakin' PICTURE, or  else I'm leaving  it WITHOUT ANY *****ING TELESCOPES!

The good news is that I think I've figured out which Ekos option was crippling the  plate solving, which is the single biggest time-wasting obstacle I faced.

 Seven hours in the park for 42 minutes of integration time, and a couple of whacks at the result with Topaz Denoise and Sharpen AI that probably qualify as crimes against nature. Here's the Leo Triplet.

[daemon]

😆 Great story!! Well done and a fab image considering all that you went through!

10 out of 10 for being so determined!! I think that shows why this hobby can be so rewarding despite the frustrations. Always worth hanging in there!

And I often find, when you have a "bad night" you always end up learning something new - so I'm glad you solved your plate solving issue!!

I hope you still have those friends! 😆 And thumbs up to the Park Rangers for leaving you alone!

Will look forward to the next tale! 👍😉

[ollypenrice]

Good story and result. If it's of any interest I have thousands of hours of DS imaging under my belt, run a business based on it, write about AP in magazines and have never used plate solving in my life. I believe RBA doesn't use it either, which you might find more convincing...

Olly

[rickwayne]

See, that's just it. A duffer like me grabs any crutch he can.