CN10 M86 Reloaded plus Western Veil nebula and M101

Goal: Grab additional frames of M86 on the CN10... work to try and reduce coma with the existing rack & pinon focuser.

Set up around 8:45...  Great skies...zero clouds...no moom (set at 8:30pm)...warn temps (80's)...meteoblue suggests good seeing (green).  

Started focusing and drift alignment around 9:45.  Was unable to catch Polaris through the trees with the polar scope.  :<  Leveled the mount and eyeballed north.  Initial drift alignment showed ~85' off (DEC line drifting down).  Focused on Vindemiatrix (Epsilon Virginis) and after tightening the focus lock, tilted the focus tube downwards.  Adjusted azimuth by loosing on the right (east)...and got to 62".  Second adjustment: ~12". Third azimuth adjustment: -1.2".  Internal guider calibrated w/o problem and showed initial RMS of ~2" (with variation across a line spanning RA).

Generated two jobs in the Indi/Ekos scheduler...first M86 (3x40 lights) and then HD 197912 (the Western Veil Nebula).  After collecting 40 lights for M86 (going down to ~32 degrees altitude), hit trees and ended collection.  Noted that the Veil nebula isn't visible until ~45 degrees (trees), and so inserted M101 collection in between.  Jobs ran successful until ~3:30am when suspended due to astronomical dawn (at 3:45...with 15 minute safety zone).  

At 08:30 collected 30 flats (pointed to zenith) and 30 dark flats (telescope covered, pointed at the house).  Integration in Astro Pixel Processor (with Bayer drizzle and binning 2:1) showed massive noise... isolated to the dark flats (too much light leaking in?).  Reprocessed with dark flats collected on the 05/21 session with good results.

Integration for the Western Veil nebula collection:


Began a second night of collection on 06/05. Similar conditions with no moon, no wind and no clouds. Meteoblue continues to show good seeing (green).  Temps are higher in the upper eighties with some humidity.  Set up at 8:45pm with polar drift alignment started around 9:20pm.  Initial drift showed the DEC line drifting up... so tightened on right.  Resulted in over-correction with polar alignment error of ~15'.  After several adjustments, reached a remarkably low alignment error of <0.05'.  RMS errors on guiding were relatively low (<2").  Set up manual collection against M86 a bit after 10pm (since the scheduler sees astronomic twilight at 10:30pm).  Around 10:45pm set up there jobs in the scheduler -- M86, M101 and the Veil nebula.  Oddly, the Veil nebula job scheduled as 'invalid' and had to be corrected later.  Ultimately, obtained a good set of ~30 light frames for M86 and M101 and ~40 frames for the Veil nebula.

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