Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

Fall is usually the ideal time to go out back and observe and image the sky. Cooler temperatures, and most importantly, no bugs (mosquitos, black flies, deer flies, horse flies and more). Good intentions abound and then reality hits.
Our newest imaging platform “Serenity” has been sitting idle for almost a month. Some issues in commissioning a new observatory is normal and we are almost there… just need a few more days and nights of work to finish it off!
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In this case, the OSB roof has a leak. I suspect it will be replaced with real plywood in the spring, but in the meantime we are looking at a winter temporary fix.
The new dew shield is working wonders. A dew heating strap has been repaired and installed but not yet used as the power supply needs to be configured and tested.
The only good news is that the amount of dark sky at night is increasing and there is now time to get out in the evening under reasonably dark skies.

After my last great prediction for clear skies and planning an imaging session earlier in the week… and then having it totally cloud over hours earlier than predicted… I decided to wait and see about last night.

After Survivor, I went out and had the north half of the sky clear and the south half full of high cloud interspersed with sucker holes.

Hmm.. it’s been some time.. lets try anyways.

Opened up the Imaging platform to discover water inside. Arrg!

The cover had come off the scope and was crumpled on the floor and wet, the scope was damp but not wet and covered with a fine layer of white particles.. unsure what yet.. will have to check in the daytime.

I had noticed the serial cable end of the telescope computer interface was showing signs of rust, so I put the end connector of the new usb-serial adapter into a ziplock bag, zipped it up most of the way and put it on a shelf with the cable going up but not touching the roof or walls.

The bag was full of water 🙁

I had just added last week a shelf to cover the laptop, JUST IN CASE, and the laptop stayed dry.

In any event.. it was already late, the place was open so I went ahead and did three runs of Saturn (30 sec, 30 sec autoaligned and 10sec autoaligned), and Mars (same).

Saturn was so low and covered with enough cloud that the exposures were relatively very long.. 89 and 98 msec.. meaning only 10-11 framespersecond.
Sat_20180927_014503_ZWO ASI290MC_Exposure=98ms_pipp_lapl4_ap38reg50p.png

Mars was higher, almost due south, but still enough bad cloud, transparency poor and seeing poor, with 9ms exposures, more than normal.

The Moon had also come up and was in the eastern clouds, lighting up the sky.

These are the best results in UT time.

Mars_20180927_015102_ZWO ASI290MC_Exposure=9ms_pipp_lapl4_ap22reg25p.png

This is a 45 second video of the SCGO Serenity Observatory opening up for the evening. This is a 4’x4′ imaging platform with offset roof and offset doors (to cover gaps from wind and rain).
The scope has a blue fabric cover just in case of driving winds and water leaks.