[xelasnave]

I line up the scope usually manually and its only been the last week that I have used the motors to any degree to drive it around..I have done it that way for ten years and as I know where stuff is generally object location is easy for me ...years of night after night in the bush has it that way for me.

But changes have crept in since I have had the lappy out there with a little table and chair as I now sit and drive the scope at the moment via the hand paddle..I must connect the mount to the lappy..I have the cable here someplace...so last night after imaging Eta until I needed a meridian flip and being too lazy to do so I thought how about doing Omega Centuri given the Moonlight and the clouds coming in...so I picked up the hand paddle and drove the scope to where I thought the new target would be ..at least close enough to use the finder to center it and bring it on the screen...so I pointed to whete I thought it would be whilst sitting in the chair to the North of the mount about a meter away...sharpcap was still on a one minute exposure loop so I stopped that and upped the gain and dropped the exposure to a second so as to help position the target...when I did that I nearly fell off the chair because Omega C appeared dead center of the screen☺. And folk say playing pool is a waste of time.

Anyways by the time I played around selecting a setting for gain and exposure the screen came up black... mmm that setting should have been the one..looked up and the whole sky was now covered in cloud..not that cloud you can still shot thru but real dense cloud..denser than me... I think it dropped in rather than rolled in...so I gave it in happy to have had a great run under the Moon and particularly chuffed at my sit down line up...and all this helped me forget how the night started.

I keep the 120 amp battery that powers the camera and lap top on the floor in the rear of my little car...I have the solar panel leads coming thru the window and they are off and on as I charge two batteries one in the car another under the mount ...so the night starts by disconnecting the solar panel and hooking up the inverter...horrors I connected the solar panel wrong way round..negative to positive and positive to negative...you fool..does you brain work only half the time..I really thought the battery would be stuffed but then remembered the solar panel has a neat little regulator..maybe just maybe it was built with fools like me in mind...rushed to get the multi meter ...please please be ok please be ok pleeeease ...that worked..12.7 volts ...so saying please does help☺... mmm but it has not been charged (unless the regulator was smart enought to fix that) and the previous session had the camera and lappy (a hungry little beast for electricity) but also I ran a charger as well to charge the battery under the mount..that battery runs the mount only...so my conclusion was I will run out of power..the generator was a fair way away and up some stairs ..move agony I thought..mmm it neefs petrol..dont complain get moving you winger...but notwithstanding my stupidity the battery ran until the clouds came in...so now I have data from last night and data from Feb. around three hours ..maybe more so I have something to play with today...I loaded everything ha lum rbg s and o in Deep Sky stacker before I layed down to watch a couple of cage fights to relax me and get me off to sleep...happily before I decided to sign off dss had registered 525 subs☺Feb all 30 sec and last night each one minute...after registering the screen went blank for ages. .oh no.. but came back telling me another 17 minutes before it would get to stacking..so another cage fight..mmm no so a bit a history ..more on the pyramids in China...anyways when dss stacker got to stacking it let me know it would be 6.5 hours ...perfect I will be awake by then...went to sleep as I was already in bed...and I woke up with the cat pushing his paws in and out of my beard ..he likes that and I dont mind either..and thought..the stack the stack...leaned over grabbed the lappy and started moving the mouse around to get the display back...it came back to show still stacking but as I leaned in to see how much longer the final appeared..I was worried it would not turn out as that happens sometimes with different nights data...and there were right side up and the other way around etc...but there it was..a nice graph and even unprocessed a nice looking image..that will be sortta my base to build upon..I am now stacking each individual channel and plan to add them all together during the day..and if I have time I may set up the eight inch and work on it a little...one needs variety in life cant spend all day processing or just concentrate on one scope...as I have always said one must have balance...now if I can only get my daughter to bring me food I can save time there...
Which reminds me ..connect the solar panel to the battery ...maybe the right way to show how clever I am☺.
Alex