Koehler Urban Astrophotography

 03/20/2024 -- Clear skies but enormous moon.  Switched to the venerable Orion ST80 singlet with the dual narrow-band filter in hopes of getting collection against emission nebula.  This was not to be... but was able to set up the OTA, get it into focus with the SV405cc (in preparation for the 04/08 eclipse) to include the finder and grab some light frames for a quality check.  Ended up collecting frames over a range of (too small) and highly inappropriate targets (for this OTA/filter combination) centered on NGC 4438 with M87 and M88 in the field of view. Indi Allsky camera pseudo sky quality metric for 03/20 - 21 showing poor values (15k where 5k is good). Indi Allsky star counts for 03/20 -21. Forecast from meteoblue for 03/20-21 with giant moon. Forecast from cleardarksky showing anything but for this evening. Started collecting 120s light frames at a gain of 120 with offset 5...but moved to 180s after examining the first few light frames in ASTAP and they appeared dark. Upwards of

 3/7/24 -- first moonless, cloudless night with workable temps.  Attempting to capture M94 high in the north sky from the Meade LX10 EMC with UV/IR cut filter, Meade 0.63 focal reducer and the Svbony 405cc camera.  Set camera temp to 0C and using 0 gain and 0 offset. Telescopius simulator result for M94 using the SCT with the 0.63 focal reducer and the SV405CC camera. Telescopius M95 altitude plot for 03/07/24. Cleardarksky forecast for 3/7/24 for Montgomery County showing fairly clear skies and reasonable seeing expected after midnight. Meteoblue forecast for 03/07/2024 for Silver Spring illustrating clear skies expected for the evening. Before mounting the OTA and counterweights, checked the mount as level and utilized the polar scope (due to a clear view of Polaris through the backyard tree -- a rarity).  Adjusted the altitude up slightly and did a sanity check to ensure ~39 degrees. Initial alignment measured with PHD2 from the Odroid was ~ -11 after several minutes of drift. Used

02/18/2024 -- With clear skies but a giant moon overhead, after some initial experiments with a Nikon Nikkor 300mm F4.5 IF ED AI-S Manual Focus Telephoto Prime, decided to get out the vintage Jason 700mm F11.6 singlet and test it out with the Panasonic Lumix GH5 attached to the business end.  Used the incredibly bad Celestron CG-3 just to hold the scope in place using the vixen dovetail on the OTA. Results from stills (edited in digikam):  And a video edited in Davinci Resolve 18.6:   02/19/2024:  Repeat on a second night.  Found counterweights and other parts for the CG-3.  What an awful mount...no idea why I'd purchased such a terrible piece of equipment.  But basically as a fixed mount with a lightweight OTA and no wind...it's fine.  Skies were similar to last night...cloud free. Seeing forecast from meteoblue for 02/19/2024 With counterweights and knobs on the mount, centering the moon and positioning for photos and video worked far better.  Experimented with several exposu