So my last time imaging with the RASA I was having issues with my Meridian Flip. I suspected it was because the calibration was so far off on the StarSense... and I was right. My calibration was off by 19 minutes. I first tried to do the All-Star Polar Align after doing StarSense Auto-Align but that just made my polar alignment worse, which it shouldn't have changed as I had left my mount on the pad and covered. So I went back to my tried and true SharpCap polar alignment, got it to within seconds in both RA and Dec and then calibrated my StarSense. Did a new Auto-Align and things were looking back to normal. It cost about 45 mins of trial and error but it was a clear but windy night with no moon and even though I was starting at 11:30 I still wanted to take advantage of it.
On problem I seem to have is even though it is pretty clear there will always be the random cloud that flies through my target area, so I've resorted to always using short exposures and just do a lot of them. Makes the processing a little longer but with the F/2 imaging on the RASA its still produces amazing depth in the images. I decided to try the Witch Head Nebula and even though not the most colorful nebula its still pretty cool. I setup N.I.N.A to take 240 x 15 sec exposures and started watching the live-stack on SharpCap. It went pretty good and I'm pretty happy with the image I was able to produce.
I'm still hoping the Universe, and perhaps the Galactic Federation is nice to me and delivers the Celestron Edge HD 11 before the Great Conjunction but its looking pretty slim. I though ordering the scope at the beginning of November would give it enough time but it might not make it. I've been playing around with my girls Celestron 90AZ Costco special mounted on my CGX and yes it has better focal length than the RASA its still not the best for imaging... we shall see what we can come up with.
Blue Water and Dark Skys
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