Bad weather and late darkness

Bad weather combined with late darkness as summer is coming, all these rendered no observation.

I have ordered a little cheese board to mount my camera lenses together with my little guidescope side-by-side.  

It looks very elegant.

I will be selling my camera lens adapter for my ASI camera, it will be simpler to go for a guiding setup like this.  This is more stable and cheaper to run.  The only downside is no light pollution filter could be used, but I don't think it's needed for relatively short focal length.

20260430 Canon 6D with Canon 200mm f2.8L, S30 Messier make up M94

Really trying out the Canon setup, unguided.

Markarian's Chain of galaxies M86, M87, M89, M90, M58, M60, M100 and many NGCs.

Could do no more than 30s at ISO 1600, the sky was not dark enough until 22:15.

Stacking of 30s exposures did not bring anything good enough.

S30 Pointing at M94, for around half an hour, this target was done before but the result was less than satisfactory.  

20260429 Sun

 ASIAir plus with Solarmax60.

The higher frame rate is good enough for solar imaging I would say.

Two frames mosaic sttitched.

Focus by JMI-CM modified with ZWO EAF Pro via ASIAIR Plus.

20260428 Testing of FD 300mm f2.8, S30 at Leo Triplet

The setup got a lunar video early before sunset:

Started rather late at around 22:40.

The Canon FD 300mm f2.8 is pointing at M109 unguided at 60s exposure.  

This is a test on the latest adapter, hopefully solving most of the previous issues.  

Stars look quite nice.  Effective focal length was calculated to be 293mm (it was around 270mm formerly).  Another good indicator.  The adapter could be further enhance to ensure better squaring, and slightly shorter to provide full focus travel to the NGF-CM.

For some reason I switched to M51 later, again with 60s exposure.

Unprocessed stacked raw.

The S30 is pointing at the Leo triplet (M65, M66 and NGC 3628).

Will keep these for the rest of this session.

Final version of Canon FD 300mm f2.8L with NGF-CM

I reprinted the adapter with a longer nosepiece to avoid misalignment due to the setting screw hitting the grove.  This new one is printed using PETG with carbon fibre.  To do this, I have to use stainless steel nozzle but it's still difficult.  

The first one failed in the middle, since the supporting structure collapsed during the print:

It's so bad that I have to cancel the print, wasting quite a lot of filaments.

I did a atomic pull to clear up everything, slow down the print as advised by Gemini.  It did help but some of the supporting collapsed too:

Since I kept a close eye on the printing process (3.5 hr!), I am aware of the issue before it's too late.  Pausing the print and ask Gemini again, I trimmed the hairy part so that it won't hinder the nozzle movement.  But the lost of some supporting part will be a trap for closing the ceiling.  Gemini suggested to use masking tape to replace the lost support:

Gemini said it's valley of death!  I slowed down the printing of the ceiling to 40%, and it closes sucessfully.  The new adapter was printed nicely.

No more misalignemt issue with the longer nosepiece before the grove, another issue was found about squaring the focuser.  It could be adjusted by the fixing screws on the NGF-CM.

This is another hobby altogether.  I mean DIY of equipments.

Frustrating sometimes but lovely at the end.  I will test it out shortly.  Dark night is getting shorter and shorter.  

20260425 S30 + 300mm guided

Setup everthing before 10:00pm, I got around 30 minutes before sleeping.

I am still using the old PLA adapter, with minor adjustment.  The new PETG-CF was a failure during printing, some of the supports collapsed...

Aimming the Canon 300mm to M101, taking 180s exposures.  

Seems some major issue with that adapter.

Aimming the S30 to NGC 4631, taking 30s exposures, for 40 minutes.

Nice target.

20260424 Adapting the NGF-CM to 2", visual observation on the moon, messier marathon M92

This is the second adapter made for the NGF-CM, this is a 2" nosepiece to connect with my Meade 8" SCT as well as my 85mm refractor.  It can be used with any telescope with a 2" focuser if it could provide enough focus travel.  Since the NGF-CM is pretty low profile, so at least the above two will work without problem.

Pulling out my Meade SCT to test:

It's not yet dark, but observing the moon is no problem.

The collimation is dead-on this time, pushing to 250x with the SVBony 8-16mm at 8mm is great.  I missed the view of the moon at such high power for long.  Good thing is that, the SVBony is nearly parfocal with my Explore Scientific 30mm.

--

Setup my S30 at around 10:05, pointing at M92, a globular cluster:

Around 30 minutes of exposure, dedicated this short session to this target.

20260423 Night Session: M51 and Lyrid meteor shower

Did once in the afternoon, now this is the night session, started at around 22:10pm.

S30 aimming at M51 tonight.

Setup my Insta360 One R with starlapse, 5s each frame for Lyrid meteor shower.

It begans to fog up very quickly, hope it will clear up soon.

It didn't clear up at all until even the next morning.  The above was stacked with 30 minutes.