Koehler Urban Astrophotography

 03/19/2026 -- No moon, but lots of clouds (more than predicted) makes the evening a good opportunity to play with the Celestron CGEM DX with the Nexstar+ version 4.22 hand controller and Indi/Ekos with regards to meridian flip.  Numerous / repeated disasters where the scheduler is paused ... in some cases for a half hour...other times for hours (never recovering) from repeated attempts to deal with meridian flip...almost always looking northward (since the deck is facing polaris).  Read the Stellarmate guide on meridian flip... which while helpful, does not necessarily provide clear guidance specific to the Celestron...but it does illustrate how this process _should_ work.  Re-read the overview on the Celestron NexStar Indi driver ...which is outdated and does not really deal with the interplay between driver, Ekos / Indi meridian settings and hand controller RA limits and meridian settings.  Also read the original Celestron User Manual for the CGEM , which do...

 3/8/2026 -- Clouds are gradually clearing out and the moon is not set to rise until after midnight...so working to capture light frames from a well-positioned galaxy -- NGC 3184.  Checked polar alignment with PHD2 running on the Odroid C4...drift alignment showed near 0 error (after an extended period of drifting).  Due to sudden heat wave (to 70F), manually adjusted the focus (turned primary mirror focus knob left 1/2 turn, total).  Seeing forecast for 03/08-09/2026 from meteoblue (top) and cleardarksky (bottom) suggesting clearing skies through midnight...with the moon appearing after 00:49. Set up the scheduler with NGC 3184 collecting UV/IR light frames through 01:35 and M94 collecting until 05:45.  Set the chiller on the Sv405cc to 0C to match existing calibration frames but also since the temperature is predicted to fall to 45F overnight. Overnight, 80x80s NGC 3184 light frames and 59x80s M94 light frames were collected.  After a lengthy (30 minute) ...