Yesterday, I spent a great afternoon of quality time with my grandson, Marek. We arrived back home at around 10:30 PM. The skies were clear and bright. I immediately made a pot of coffee and opened the observatory in preparation for a two hour run on a target that has eluded me. While waiting for the run to complete, i entertained myself by searching for meteors from the Leonid Meteor Shower and thinking up catchy phrases to print on t-shirts. Using a common theme, i came up with a phrase that seemed appropriate at the time. But for some reason, i don't believe that "Astronomers do it when it's so cold it will take your breath away" is going to be a big seller.
I thought i had everything right. The alignment went well, the tracking was dead on, batteries were at full charge and i had a good lock with the autoguider. But after the run, i reentered the observatory and did a quick scan of the photos i had acquired. They were junk. Of the sixty photos i had taken, only a small handful were usable. Upon closer examination, i discovered that one of the cables had gotten tangled and had been pulling against the scope for the entire run. I hadn't checked the cables. Oh well, the forecast is for clear skies tonight...
I like to start each post with a photo. The image i used today was taken from a few shots that were gathered Thursday night before the clouds moved in. Because this is not the first time i have forgotten to check the cables and ruined a set of photos, I thought the Thursday night image was appropriate. The Dumbell Nebula is about 1300 light years distant. Sixteen shots at two minutes each. ISO 1600.
clear skies...
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