Cassiopeia Observatory report

Another Bad Imaging Night;
NGC672 Galaxy
Posted: 3 November 2018

Open: Friday, 2 November 2018, 1807 MST
Temperature: 78°F

Session: 1297
Conditions: Mostly clear

Equipment Used:
12" f/8 LX600 w/StarLock
2" 24mm UWA eyepiece

Camera:
D850 DSLR

1811 MST: LX600 ON, StarLock OFF, High Precision OFF.

Viewed Saturn and three moons, 102X. Then viewed Mars, 102X. The South Polar Case was visible. Seeing was not good.

A neighbor to the south had their "security" lighting on for much of the early evening:

Years ago I had talked with this neighbor about the lights shining into my observatory, but they couldn't understand the problem of their lights being visible beyond their property line.

I then began preparing the D850 DSLR for imaging.

1825 MST: slewed to M74 (galaxy), but it was not yet visible due to the twilight sky still being too bright.

1835 MST: High Precision ON. 1837 MST: M74 was now faintly visible, 102X.

I wanted to image M74 for my Extragalactic Supernova Project. 1908 MST: mounted the D850 DSLR at prime focus of the 12" telescope, focused and locked the mirror. I then did some short framing tests images of M74.

1932 MST: StarLock ON.

I tried imaging M74 (NGC628) but the seeing was so bad that the StarLock kept losing its guidestar. I tried various StarLock Guide Rates but nothing helped improve the autoguiding. I then slewed to NGC672 (another target for my Extragalactic Supernova Project) and managed to get one decent StarLock autoguided 1 minute, ISO 6400, White Balance 5000K image of this faint galaxy:

Due to the poor seeing I gave up imaging. 2005 MST: StarLock OFF, High Precision OFF. Removed the camera.

2007 MST: viewed NGC672 (galaxy), 102X.

2008 MST: LX600 OFF.

As I left the observatory I saw the likely culprit of the poor seeing; clouds were visible in the northwestern quandrant of the sky.

Close: Friday, 2 November 2018, 2017 MST
Temperature: 59°F

Session Length: 2h 10m
Conditions: Partly cloudy

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