The night really cleared up here on the Sunshine Coast, FINALLY. Until about 2200 anyway, when a band of high level well spaced alto-cu came through (one that sat on or near my target for an hour!), followed by what appears now to be rain bearing stratus (I can smell rain in the air as I type this outside, and see occasional lightning flashes). It's now 0022, and there is 8/8 cloud cover, and I am now running my darks series (5 x 5 mins, at ISO 500) and will run the flats and biases from the garage over night
I started with the Cone Nebula, but that was an almost failure thanks to my average focus. I then slew to A-Crux to refocus, when the damned GSO extension tube decided to slip - as usual - and the camera ALMOST fell! If I were using regular thumb screws without the brass compression ring, there would have been cursing and cussing heard as far as Launceston!
Salvaged that, and started a run on NGC 1365 with SN 2012... dismal failure - my mount just would not hold position near the meridian/zenith (NEQ6, nd it's lightly loaded) - going to have to look into that. You could physically see the stars moving in PHD.
So, onto Eta Carinae, and did 10 x 5 min subs. A little off centre, but not too bad.
Then moved onto NGC 3324, and got 55 minutes of good solid data! NICE colour, beautiful crisp stars, and the cluster is NICE and tight. I'll process that tomorrow.
Anyway, time for bed. Hope some QLD'ers got a crack tonight AT LAST too!
