someone trying to tell me something?

[seeker372011]

last saturday looked too iffy to make the hike to a dark site-with bush fires and smoke from back burning everywhere so I stayed home and set up in the backyard

set up with DSLR focus to take a series of 12 ten minute images, started it and went back inside to see what was happening on Ice in Space. Like an idiot I trusted the automation...and ...

anyway something went seriously wrong and I wound up with-instead of 12 images-one image 3315 seconds long!

in light polluted sydney with a skyfog limit of about 4 minutes-you can probably imagine what a single 3000 plus second image turned out like

what really sucks is polar alignment was spot on, guiding was great..and cloud rolled in as soon as I discovered the problem rendering the rest of the night useless...

maybe the planets were not quite aligned correctly for successful astroimaging ? :) :)

[jjjnettie]

Must have been your little alien dude that did it.

[seeker372011]

LOL

I thought he was my good luck charm

[xelasnave]

Perfect polar alignment is usually obtained 5 minutes before cloud cover rolls in. Actually just remembered the shots I took with the 300mm I did not align the mount at all.. just ploked it down lined up by eye with the usual tree top..meant to fix it up but forgot.. tired that was it..but when I look at the shots thats some sort of fluke.
alex

[Ric]

Hi Seeker, don't you just hate nights like that.
I had one like that the other night. I set up and aligned then put on the DSI, took a test image and got a giant black smudge right in the middle of the FOV.
I had just cleaned everything that morning and thought I had managed to put a finger print on one of the filters. So I took the camera back inside and pulled it all apart looking for the smudge which turned out to be a cat hair which seems to infest everything we own.
I put it all back together again and went out just in time to watch the clouds roll in, some nights are just not meant to happen.

cheers

[Lee]

That should be one of the fundamental laws of physics, when it comes to astroimaging! :lol: not funny at the time though.....