No image yet, sorry, buuut juuuust keeping everyone in the why the heck is Mike not imaging yet??, loop....
So, aaaalmost had first light on Saturday night ...everything set, managed to get the new location coordinates of Eagleview Observatory into the mount, had a good WiFi connection in the dome, cameras booted up and software ready....aaaand, of course, the rain started, faaaark! It was predicted patchy cloud, slowly decreasing to clear around 10pm or so, so I had thought I could generally shake the system down, refining mount pointing, focusing off axis guide cameras etc, while it was patchy cloud and then get into it once it cleared...well, not quite. It remained mostly cloudy and drizzled and rained, on and off until 10:30pm, by which time it had become thick fog (basically we were inside the clouds) with a handful of hazy stars and Jupiter visible, so I decided to write the night off and go to bed. I woke just after 1am, sadly with a bit of an upset stomach but checked outside anyway ...aaaand wouldn't you know it??..absolutely crystal clear, super dark sky, full of sparkling stars, surprisingly bright and billowing Milky Way star clouds hugging the entire south-western horizon and hardly a breath of wind!...I thought arrrggg! do I get into it???... but I didn't feel very well and Murphy would surely make it cloud over as soon as I got everything ready again, plus I was in sleep mode . Needless to say, when I woke up at 7:30am Sunday morning (feeling much better mind you) and looked out the window, secretly praying it would be overcast, just to give me some symbolic vindication,....as the attach photo testifies, it was a crystal clear blue sky ....would have been a spectacular 4hours or so of darkness had I stayed awake at 1am ...DOH!..Sigh...I'll get there...eveeeentually...
Becasue it was being played in NZ, I did get to watch the All Blacks school the Wallabies in Rugby (yet again...), while enjoying a nice bowl of tasty pasta with a glass of red, before all of the above....(maybe it was this that upset my stomach..?)
Bugger, I know the feeling Mike
Couple of weeks ago I was down at my retirement getaway / Dome due to getting some painting done under a flood insurance claim. Haven’t used the Dome in months
Set up ready as forecast said clear
Went out at 7pm cloudy , checked again at 8.00pm cloudy , checked again at 9.00pm patchy cloud , damn so went to bed at 9.30pm woke up around midnight and checked outside , all clear
Will I , won’t I , nah go back to bed
Yeah I know, just after all the planning and effort (not to mention $'s ) to get this blasted observatory to this point, I'm busting to have it actually operational, at least to some level, before I forget how to image process !
Well it's been a long journey but fiiiiinally, last night, the first photons were gathered from Australias Highest Observatory!
I have imagined last night for a veeery long time and it was everything I had imagined and more Walking around the elevated observatory deck, with a wee dram in hand, a couple of almost comforting twinkling lights visible on the horizon, from Cooma 55km away, an open mountain top field all around me, flooded with dulcet ground illumination, from a first quarter Moon, with a super clear sky above, hardly a breath of wind and only the sound of camera cooling fans, emanating from the majestic white 3M Scopedome, to break the silence...it was just magic! Needless to say I had a smile on my face...sigh...I have finally done it! Maama Mia!
With the first quarter Moon in the sky, t'was not perfectly dark of course but the Milky Way still looked better than from most Canberra locations, on a Moonless night, so I'll take it
It was mostly a night of testing everything, getting the mount pointing making sure both imaging rigs are operational, focusing the guide cameras and getting back into the operational grove. After doing a goto to Achernar and then spending some time finding the damn thing on the damn chip!...I got there in the end and synced on it, then after having polar aligned with the Polar scope, some weeks ago, the telescope is pointing well enough to land all Gotos's on the chip and most in the central 1/3, it was great zooming around the sky seeing each object land in the frame, happy days After a long hiatus, it was also satisfying to see the AP1600GTO doing its thing again, in the tracking and guiding department, delivering perfect raw autoguiding with average errors of just +/- 0.2 arc sec!
The first set of frames coming down showed we had excellent seeing and this continued all night, so that made me very happy, I always hoped (prayed) my first imaging session would see a repeat of the excellent visual observing conditions I had experienced so far up at Eagleview and I wasn't disappointed
First Light is not a full blown colourimage, in fact, it is only a 2 X 1min snap, with no darks, no flats and very basic minimal processing, basically just a log stretch and curves to reveal the dynamic range and that's it ....the potential is pretty obvious and I'm excited to get into my first proper imaging project
I have attached a crop to this post but you can see the full size, full res version (remember, its a mere 2X1min exposure under a first quarter Moon) HERE
Happy Days, onward and upward from here as they say...
Mike
Last edited by strongmanmike; 03-10-2022 at 06:46 PM.
Mike,
Fantastic news
You can now put all the hard work behind you and enjoy what’s in store for you up there on the mountain
Your guiding is tremendous on that rig so chase after those dim ones
Congratulations
Congrats Mike, I can see (or is it feel?) the smile on your face from here
Mate you could hang your wet towels on each end of it
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave882
Congratulations that’s looking spectacular!! Good to see everything’s working well- can’t wait to see more images from your rig soon
Me too
Quote:
Originally Posted by Startrek
Mike,
Fantastic news
You can now put all the hard work behind you and enjoy what’s in store for you up there on the mountain
Your guiding is tremendous on that rig so chase after those dim ones
Congratulations
...yeah, I know! 
...everything set, managed to get the new location coordinates of Eagleview Observatory into the mount, had a good WiFi connection in the dome, cameras booted up and software ready....aaaand, of course, the rain started, faaaark! 
but checked outside anyway ...aaaand wouldn't you know it??..absolutely crystal clear, super dark sky, full of sparkling stars, surprisingly bright and billowing Milky Way star clouds hugging the entire south-western horizon and hardly a breath of wind!...I thought arrrggg! do I get into it???... but I didn't feel very well and Murphy would surely make it cloud over as soon as I got everything ready again, plus I was in sleep mode 
. Needless to say, when I woke up at 7:30am Sunday morning (feeling much better mind you) and looked out the window, secretly praying it would be overcast, just to give me some symbolic vindication,....as the attach photo testifies, it was a crystal clear blue sky 
! 
and I wasn't disappointed 
