Jupiter at opposition & perigee

Jupiter at opposition and at perigree ... epic time to create some stacks for processing.  Extracted the venerable Svbony SV305 out of the indi-allsky camera for some planetary imaging.

Set up the CGEM DX with the Meade LX10 with the 3x Celestron X-Cel LX barlow.  Leaves still on the trees, so no polar scope ... just used the cell phone compass for a rough north alignment. Using Kstars/Indi/Ekos, started a polar alignment by steering the OTA to Kitalpha (star). Using phd2 drift alignment tool (running on the Odroid via remote desktop), started at -250'.  Tightened on the right side of the mount to get to -155', then -72', then overshot to 5.8'. Ultimately, after alot of back and forth (and a meridian flip that almost went unnoticed) got this down to -0.2'.

Clear skies after 11pm, little to no wind. Seeing is not expected to be great.

Clearoutside.com forecast for 9/25...downloaded at ~10:50pm. 

Montgomery County Astrophysical Observatory forecast from cleardarksky.com illustrating poor seeing conditions expected.

Meteoblue forecast also suggesting poor seeing conditions and spotty clouds.
The key problem after getting alignment straightened is focusing the SV305 hanging off the Meade LX10 with the 3X barlow in place.  Optimally, a coarse focus in daylight would have been preferred. Unfortunately, life intervened (as it frequently does).  Performed an initial focus at prime (2000mm) w/o the barlow lens.  Captured several thousand frames before clouds moved in. :<
AstroDMx capture running on the HP laptop connected directly to the SVBony SV305 with the Celestron 93428 X-Cel LX 3x Barlow lens in place with Jupiter centered and ready for capture.

Meade LX10 on the CGEM DX with Jupiter in view between the clouds on 9/25.

09/26 -- cloudy...but no rain.  Left the mount & OTA outside from 9/25 through 9/27.
09/27 -- No clouds, a little wind.  Started phd2 on the Odroid XU4 with a drift alignment to see how far the mount has shifted since 09/25.  Initial results (pre-meridian flip) were -8'.  With a single adjustment, brought error down to below 1'.  After refocusing without the Barlow on Jupiter, collected 10 minutes of frames at 8 bit, then 10 minutes at 16 bit before refocusing with the Barlow and collecting additional 10 minutes of frames with an ROI defined for the planet.   Later, moved the SV305 to the Odroid and attempted to collect against a deep sky object... just for giggles... with the Barlow lens in place.  Selected the star Maia in the Pleiades.  Unfortunately, guiding was not working and so the 5 minute frames are unlikely to reveal much about the albeit limited capabilities of this sensor for any kind of deep sky application. :< 
Weather forecast for 09/28 from cleardarksky for Montgomery County showing poor seeing, modest transparency and zero cloud cover.

Weather forecast for 09/27-28 from meteoblue showing estimates for seeing (bad) as well as temperatures.
09/28/2022 -- Additional night of clear skies with the telescope already set up on the deck.  Noted when aligning on w Piscium that the guide scope remains closely aligned with the SV305 on the main OTA.  Initial drift alignment with PHD2 on the Odroid XU4 showed -8.8' error.  First correction brought that down to ~4.8'.  

09/30/2022 -- Pic of the collection setup with OTA, Barlow and camera


Pics from processed results from 09/25/22 collection:




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