Heart Nebula - Session 5

9:33 -- Unprecedented fifth session on a target... third night in a row with clear skies.  Yesterday started out with clouds, but cleared by midnight. Tonight is clear right from the start.  Mounted the telescope & plugged everything back in and started an additional session on IC 1805.

9:52 -- Noted issues plate solving where an offset appeared consistently with the mount failing to reach IC 1805 repeatedly.  Attempted slewing to a different target near the meridian, no luck.  Launched PHD2 to determine if polar alignment was lost.  Drift alignment was initially squirrelly with RA moving all over ... but DEC relatively stable with PHD2 drift alignment reporting 2.69' (not bad) in AZ ... but 23' in elevation.  Telescope mount sank a bit in the grass?  Adjusted elevation twice with PHD2 to arrive at 3.8'.

10:16 -- After adjusting elevation on the mount to obtain reasonable polar alignment, restarted the IC 1805 sequence with the scheduler.  This time plate solving centered the target successfully on the third solve and the internal guider calibration was successful.  Guider total RMS after 3 minutes showed 0.90".

5:15 -- Successful collection of over a hundred frames.  Scope parked successfully after completing the schedule through 4:45am (scheduled end time).  Set up bias and dark frame collection for ISO100.

Final result after pooling all the sessions in Astro Pixel Processor (which ran for several days):



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