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