Koehler Urban Astrophotography

2/27/26 - No clouds, giant moon (82%).  Because of the size and duration of the moon (all night), narrowband imaging is really necessary... but there are limited targets in view.  Noted M97 is at a favorable position.  Seeing forecast for 02/27-28/2026 from meteoblue showing almost no clouds but large persistent moon. Seeing forecast from clearoutside for 02/27-28/2026 showing favorable conditions overnight. Starting around 20:00, launched a polar drift alignment in PHD2 running on the Odroid C4 desktop over RDC.  Started at ~28' and after two adjustments (to the left, pre-meridian flip) brought this down to 0.26'.  Ran an autofocus in the background with the venerable Meade zero-shift autofocus hanging off the Shoestring Astronomy controller. Reached a minimum HFR of 3.76 after six iterations.  Low temperatures were expected near freezing and so set the SVBony Sv405CC chiller at 0C. After slewing to M97 and starting the focus routine, noted that it's still...

 2/13/2026 -- No moon, no clouds (until 05:00)...clear, cold skies.  Time for some broadband imaging on galaxies in view.  Evening started with relatively poor skies (pseudo sky quality metric of ~9200 at 21:00).  Configuration unchanged with the Celestron CGX DX mount, Meade LX10, Starizona Corrector III (0.63 corrector and reducer), Xagyl filter wheel, Svbony 405cc (chilled to -7C). Seeing forecast for 02/13-14/2026 from meteoblue (top) and clearoutside (bottom) showing clear skies expected until 05:00 and no moon. Initial drift alignment in phd2 running on the Odroid C4 showed an alignment error of ~9'. Not bad, considering it's been sitting for weeks through strong winds, snow, etc. with the cover on.  First adjustment (to the left) over-corrected...with an error of -7'. After several adjustments back & forth...ended up below 1". Set up the scheduler for light frame collection on M106 through 05:35.  Sequence file configured with gain 285, offset 24...