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M 31 / NGC 6960 / NGC 7331 / Sun

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 09/09/2026 -- no clouds (early) and no moon later.  Good night for testing ... and more fixes following Ubuntu 26.04 upgrade on the Odroid C4 plus continued surveillance and testing for the 'streaking stars' problem (that apparently really was the 12v power plug pins going into the mount).  Seeing forecast for 09/09-10/2026 suggesting no moon and relatively few clouds expected overnight. Lots of setup-and-configure problems after installing the stock (non-bleeding, Ubuntu) Kstars on top of the ppa indi drivers.  Lots of mis-configuration issues (optical train).  Gradually fought through a range of these until all the tabs in Ekos appears to be working.  Focused the guide scope... and started a drift alignment.  Found polar alignment error at 9.6' (turn to the right).  Set up the scheduler with M31 mosaic and launched it.   Ultimately, over night several light frames for one part of the M31 mosaic were collected, but guiding failed to ru...
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NGC 6960 / IC 5146 / M31

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 08/18/2026 -- Finally, after lots of cloudy / rainy nights... an evening with few (if any clouds) and modest moon (setting after 23:20).  After such a long gap, testing basics with a familiar narrow band target -- NGC 6960 (West Veil Nebula).  With temperatures still in the 70's at 23:00, set the camera chiller to 5C. Seeing forecast for 08/18-19/2026 showing few clouds...and no moon after 23:20. Started with a PHD drift alignment.  Remarkably, after weeks sitting idle, the initial polar alignment error was modest at -5'.  Turned to the left...noted visible shift in the OTA...and overcompensated at ~9'.  Turned back to the right (again, noted significant shift in the OTA) and saw -17.  :<   Back to the left.  After ~an hour of back and forth shenanigans... eventually brought this to ~4'.  Then tested the internal guider while running an initial autofocus.  Found the current focus for the OTA to be close to optimal...well wi...
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