I hope every other SE QLD amateur astronomer made the best of tonight - our first really totally clear night in a LONG, LONG time.
Had a GREAT night, after overcoming severe dew (had to turn a coil heater on outside near the rig - kept it dew free for the remainder of the night, and the slight cross-breeze made me toasty too
. The high level 80% transparent alto-stratus didn't appear until 0100, and only then SLIGHTLY in my south east quadrant, moving VERY slowly.
Did 2 hours on M83, then 1 hr 40 on M8. The CCD cooled down to -0.7°. Had an issue with APT NOT controlling the CCD temperature (Ivo, reading this?), where it cooled it to 2°, then it would warm it back up to 27° again, and then it would make the image run do a 120 MINUTE dither!!! Something VERY screwy there (I suspect the ASCOM driver), so I closed APT and ran my runs through Maxim DL instead, which cooled it consistently all night.
Finished up with a pot of visual - this time with my Vixen zoom EP so I wouldn't have to change around. Started on Saturn, then M104, NGC3372, M27, and finished up on The Jewel Box (always a beautiful finale). I tried Hoag's Object, but gave up - far too much LP around me to see ANYTHING visually there.
Here's finger's crossed for tomorrow too. Letting DSS crunch my image runs, and hitting the hay, with visions of galaxies dancing in my head...
Lined up a series of darks instead while I had a few hours sleep. By 3am the wind had died down somewhat, so i've cued it up to run until it hits the meridian.
