Koehler Urban Astrophotography

 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...

 07/13/2026 -- No moon, clear skies, great night for broadband imaging.  After prolonged spell with rain, clouds, hot temperatures (crazy hot), finally a night available with good skies.  Key issue -- trying to diagnose persistent problems guiding and imaging near the zenith.   Did note that cables could be a problem. Placed a cable tie on the mount to try and relieve the strain from the combined weight of all the cables... but this tie may have (itself) caused strain if the cables were too short.  Lengthened the amount of cable available to see if this leads to any improvements.   But the fundamental problem appears to be disagreement between Indi/Ekos and the CGEM hand controller on when a meridian flip is (or is not) needed. Possible settings changes to the hand controller?  Parameters involving Ekos for the HA limit?  Hard to say... another night to experiment. Set the camera chiller to 5C. Seeing forecast for 07/13-14/2026 from mete...

 05/11/2026 -- No moon (until after 03:00) and few (if any) clouds... great opportunity for wide band imaging.  Noted M63 is in an perfect location (fingers crossed) for collection this evening. Seeing forecast for 05/11-12/2026 from meteoblue (top) and cleardarkskies (bottom) suggesting good views for this evening / morning. Started with an initial polar drift alignment with PHD2 running on the Odroid C4.  First iteration: 10.19'. Turn azimuth adjustment knob left.  Over-corrected (-6').  Next iteration, brought this down to <1'.  Set up the scheduler for M 63 and the sequence for 0C camera, 20x80s exposure, gain of 285 and offset of 24 (as usual).  The Indi Allsky backyard camera showed a pseudo sky quality metric of ~4960 t 22:25 (great sky quality).  The Weewx outdoor weather station showed: "time": "2026-05-11T22:25:00-0400", "generator": "weewx 5.3.1" "temperature": {"value": 50.95862068965519, "...