It has been raining crazily.
The floor is still wet but the sky clear up suddenly.
Setting up the S30 is no brainer, the best part of this little piece of equipment.
It's 20:56 now, and exposure should begin before 21:00, I still have 1.5 hour of exposure hopefully.
After around 30 minutes of exposure, it rains. I didn't realise until stacking failure was reported. I pulled the S30 inside and use a fan to dry it, hopefully it's not soaked yet.
I should try this target again later.
Will be spending the whole session on it, hopefully get more than an hour of exposure.
Finally more than two hours, 2:14 to be exact:
Quite many nebulosity. I'm going to do more of these, I mean to work on a single target per session.
I shall also bring out my 6D with my 200mm lens to take even wider field of view. Time to explore the potential of non-cooled imaging.
I am doing mosaic with 2x to maximise the field of view, started at around 9:00pm.
Transparency maybe 5-6/10.
See how long exposure I could get.
Total for 46 minutes, failed to finish the whole mosaic, the nebula is not very visible:
No more new target could be acquired tonight.
C27 will be my first target, the Crescent Nebula:
40 minutes of exposure.
I also setup my 85mm refractor looking at the moon and also scan around with my daughter Almy.
Despite AI found it couldn't be completed here in Scotland, I will continue anyway.
M5 is higher in the sky since I started earlier (before 9:00pm) today.
Blocked.
M8 also blocked.
M9 also blocked.
M72 partially blocked.
M73 seems alright, only slightly blocked, still failed.
--
Going back to M72 worked (9:26pm), for 11 minutes:
Going back to M73 (optical asterism of four main stars) for 5 minutes:
--
No more suitable target, so switching to C11 the Bubble Nebula with M52 at a corner, for 15 minutes:-
Re-visited M14 for a better image, for xx minutes:-
No targets found in the "best for the night" list.
So, I try to check one by one, M52 is the first target, at higher than 60 degrees up.
Next is M10:
And then M12 which is rather close by:
M14 which is a bit higher in the sky (just 30s exposure due to cloud)
Last target, non Messier, IC 5070... just to find a target higher in the sky to get rid of the cloud, failed due to cloud... only got 2 minutes of exposure which show nothing.
Three more! Not bad indeed.
--
Next time:
M72-73 around 20 degrees
M5 around 10 degrees
M107, M8, M9 are less than 10 degrees
It's pretty clear tonight after the brass band of my daughter. She's enjoying the views with binoculars and I am doing this.
First up is M29:
And then M27:
And then M71:
Pretty surprise to be able to capture M11 which is rather low in the sky, a very fine open cluster, the wild duck:
M2 is another pleasant surprise too, time to sleep after this one, a compact globular cluster:
