Imaging in the Caribbean can be frustrating at times. The other night as the sun was going down it looked like it was going to be a clear night so I setup the scope and got it ready to polar align. One good news is the last time I imaged I took a can of blue spray paint and just put three dots at the very bottom of my mount on the concrete. When I packed it up there was a nice little outline of where my tripod legs were, so now its pretty easy to set the tripod up in the exact same location.
All was looking good but it put me a little behind schedule and as it was my night to cook I tried to polar align and cook at the same time. Wasn't working so well so we finished dinner and I was going to quickly get it started imagine while my wife put our youngest down. It was kind of windy but SharpCap said I had an excellent polar alignment. My target for the night was the Soul Nebula, I had captured the Heart Nebula early on so I wanted to complete the pair. As I started working on getting ready for a boat trip the next day I head a slight sound of rain on the metal roof... I quickly ran out to the scope to cover it but by the time I got down there the rain had stopped... barely 30 secs on rain... not even enough to cover the deck but enough to wet the optics and make me nervous about the camera.
I took it as sign that maybe I should pack up the scope and try again another day. Sometimes its better to just call it quits before you fight it all night and wake up crabby because you are tired and had a crappy night of imaging.
Dark (dry) Skys and Blue Water
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