It did look like the clouds would retreat and allow a view of the stars… alas, as soon as the travel mount was set up, clouds were back. In between holes in the rapidly passing clouds some stars remained visible, so I did try for C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy, down and right from the Pleiades. Indeed, on one picture, I did get it!
For the first time in ages, clear skies! I drove to Limpach, and first set up the travel mount and started shooting Lovejoy using the unmodded 500D and the 55-200mm tele lens. At 88mm, I had the Pleiades in the upper left corner, and Lovejoy to the right of the picture, the tail theoretically reaching back under the Pleiades. I took pictures of 60s resp. 120s at ISO1600 f/6.3. In parallel, I set up the EQ6 with the FH80/400. First, I went for Lovejoy's nucleus, then switched to the Rosetta nebula - but had to break that off due to thin clouds. I then moved on to the California nebula. By this time, the 55-200 lens was frozen over, as were the finders. I did take a few shots of Orion using the 50mm lens. I then decided to try the N200/1000, but must have ruined the polar alignment - first test shots of M42 showed trails instead of dots for the stars. After correction, I still had issues, and pretty soon had totally ruined pictures - probably the secondary mirror had not only misted up, but frozen over. End of observation session.
Doing the post-processing of the pictures, I had a surprise: apparently regim had interchanged the red and blue color channels, resulting in pretty strange looking pictures (red instead of blue haloes around the stars, H-a emission nebulae in blue/mauve instead of red, Lovejoy yellow instead of green, Pleiades reddish instead of blue…). Exchanging the channels gave results as expected.
While yesterday the sky was pretty clear, I had to watch the kids, thus no observing. So better luck this day? First saturday of the month, i.e. AAL meeting at 20:00… might as well go early and straight to the observing site, beat the crowd and the clouds that were announced for the evening. As I arrived around 19:30, I immediately saw clouds towards the northern horizon. By the time I had set up the classic tripod with my Star Adventurer mount and taken a couple of pictures, the clouds already were overhead. I barely got a picture of Orion (south) taken using the 50mm lens, that clouds were passing there, too, i.e. were quite visible on the following pictures. Session done. F.S. still came by with some grog, which did a good job of warming us up. Better luck next time. I still did take some shots of the snowy countryside.
Clear skies for a change, moon rising late. Along with F.S., I was off to Ielwen. The sky, at least towards zenith, was pretty clear, with lots of objects clearly visible, most notably the Milky Way. Around the horizon though, there was quite some humidity present, actually frankly foggy. The lighting present (especially around Hovelange) caused strong visible gradients. With that much humidity, along with the low temperatures, made for equipment covered rather quickly in thin ice. Thus, I had to switch between equipments, until everything had gotten unusable. Anyway - the EQ6 got loaded with the Newton first, which I pointed at zenith, the Flaming Star nebula (IC405) in Auriga. The photo series ended with the secondary mirror (plus the coma corrector) being fogged over. I then switched to the FH, which got targeted at the California nebula (NGC 1499). In these cases, I used the astro-modded EOS 450D. In parallel, I used the Star Adventurer with the unmodded 500D, first with the 55-200mm lens, then the 50mm. I pointed the 200mm at Orion's belt, then the region of the Witch's Head nebula (no chance there, so I broke that off quickly), followed by the region around the Rosetta nebula. I then had to switch to the 50mm, which got pointed at the lower/central part of Perseus, then between Perseus and Cassiopeia (double cluster near center). During post-processing, I noticed a newer version of Regim (for stacking), which recently got a potentially vers useful feature for removing gradients. Just as with the previous version though, I noticed that the red and blue color channels got inverted. I also installed the dechroma plugin in GIMP and used that for the first time.
Took some pictures: Alnitak region, Auriga constellation, Hyades and Pleiades region.
I simply went out front, to the other side of the street, to get a view of the setting moon to the west. The moon was joined by Venus and Mercury, but I got there a bit late for Mercury. I tried a few shots on the simple photo mount, otherwise none of the - by now taken granted - astro goodies, i.e. pretty much as I started this hobby off. Boy, was I naive back then.
For a change, I took the Newton to the front yard in broad daylight, to take some shots of the sun. Despite some thin clouds, more or less decent results without barlow, then some less decent results with barlow lens. Classic problem is getting proper focus, or maybe too much seeing.
Some experiments on the full moon using the 500D, some shots of Cassiopeia and Auriga using the 450D.
Right before a gaming evening, I stopped in the countryside to take a few shots at Cassiopeia with the Lovejoy comet. I managed to get a decent single shot of Lovejoy with a couple of star clusters, M103 and NGC457.
Clear sky, but as it was already rather late, and I had to get up the morning after, I simply set up the Star Adventurer in the back yard. I went for the hind part of Leo, Jupiter with Praesepe next to it, most of Gemini, parts of Ursa Major, and Cassiopeia with the Lovejoy comet.
It looked like clear sky, but clouds were supposed to turn up later. I went to Ielwen, where the lighting of the soccer field got me to switch to the “secondary site”. I tried for Rosetta, went for Lovejoy in Cassiopeia, when clouds already came up. I switched to the Alnitak region, back to Lovejoy, and some Orion nebula. Using the 500D, I went for the region between Gemini and Orion, the lower part of Orion, the “handle” of the big dipper, the landscape. I had to break off rather early due to the clouds, which came in strong “early”.
On this friday: partial eclipse of the sun. As chance would have it, I was able to take the day off, and so I could properly prepary the event with:
Around the start of the partial eclipse, the sky was still clouded, making it hard, if not impossible, to properly aling the scopes while looking through the Baader solar filter. Shortly after, it cleared up sufficiently, and it got possible to both see the event properly, and take pictures even through the now thinner clouds. It turned out a single sunspot was around. It was especially interesting to see it disappear behind the moon and later reappear a while after the maximum. Once the eclipse was done, I took the opportunity to make further tests with photographing through the barlow lens, even with decent results. The usual difficulty was to focus well enough to have a decently sharp picture, this worked out this time around - provided a correct exposure. The result has been such that the penumbra of the sunspot was rather clearly visible at least on some of the pictures taken.
Evening: the sky remained rather clear, no moon, F.S. also wanted to observe but was on call, so we rendezvoused at Limpach. It turned out there was still quite some humidity in the air, which got illuminated by the too-close soccer field of Monnerich, so only zenith was clear enough for potentially decent pictures. I ended up targeting the Bode and Cigar galaxies. I tried a new approach for post-processing, first stacking in regim, then going through the “levels routine” in GIMP and storing in TIFF format, then removing the gradient using regim again, and finally some more post-processing in GIMP. This allowed me to get rid of most of the usual vignetting. What still didn't get done was guiding - I did the physical setup, but simply had forgotten how to use the SynGuider, and was too tired to look it up and fiddle with it right there.
Another session at Limpach: the weather was promising, new moon, though with F.S. being on call he couldn't go too far, thus this site instead of Ielwen. My intention was to go for the Owl nebula (M97), in tandem with the M108 galaxy. I did put up the entire stuff for guiding, but finally (again) skipped actually using it. The setup was good enough for 2-minute exposures, which had me using ISO800 instead of the (so far) usual ISO1600 setting. I ended up doing a total of 80 minutes exposure, before having to stop due to the tubus being about to hit the tripod. I then went for another 40 minutes' worth of the Sombrero galaxy, but I had more trouble there - stars looking like the focus wasn't good or something - I did notice a delta of the stars' positions from one exposure to the next, maybe something to do with now having the tubus almost horizontal instead of the previous quasi-vertical position, along with a rather heavy weight at the top end (with the guiding scope and the DSLR).
Anyway, while the Owl nebula picture turned out all right, I'm not happy with the Sombrero galaxy there.
Next to the EQ6 with the 8“ Newton, I used the Star Adventurer with the DSLR and photo lenses with some success - at least considering the short total exposures. I went for a number of different targets there. Only issue - removing the gradient on those pics taken with the 50mm lens didn't quite work out.
Over the evening, I got to see everything from Orion / Taurus via Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Bootes, Hercules, Lyra to Cygnus, besides the always-there northern constellations such as Ursa Major / Minor, Cassiopeia etc. The season for Orion or Taurus is definitely over though, they are simply too close to the horizon for taking decent pictures.
Due to upcoming tests, I'll have to skip on observing / astrophotography 'til beginning of May - it's hard enough to study at this age, with 3 kids at home, without being even more tired than usual for staying up late.
Having finished a series of exams, I can again profit from (more or less) clear skies - less this evening, as clouds were due. Still, I set up the EQ6 in the back yard, with parallel-mounted the FH80/400 and the 450Da with my newly acquired (used) 200m f/2.8 lens. I set up the SynGuider on the FH80/400 to test guiding. The target was bright Arcturus, clearly visible rather high in the eastern sky. I put the star dead center in the 10mm eyepiece, put in the SynGuider, and simply tried following the manual. While I couldn't exactly make out any stars on the display, otherwise the steps seemed to work, and so I tried exposures of up to a full ten (10) minutes. At 4 minutes, the result is perfectly satisfactory, but I have doubts about the 10 minutes - I'm not sure the guiding stuff actually worked, while the 4 minutes would seem to fit with my previous tracking-only experience. I also took a very small series of shots around Alkaid, including 3 of Alkaid and the Whirlpool galaxy - the result of which showing beyond any doubt the need to clean the 450Da's sensor! By the time I was done with those test shots, humidity was clearly present (large haloes around the brighter stars, e.g. Vega), and the announced clouds were coming up.
Rather clear sky announced, even if humidity and wind were on the high side. Indeed, some thin clouds were passing, light pollution was very apparent at the Limpach site. Due to the wind, I set up the FH80/400, but only as visual help to aim the 450Da with the 200mm f/2.8 Canon lens. I used this on the virgo cluster, i.e. M98/M100 on one end, Markarian's chain on the other end. I ended up with 109 pictures, each of 1 minute exposure at ISO800 and f/5. In parallel, I used the 500D on the StarAdventurer, using my new 10-18mm Canon lens, my father's old Pentacon 135mm f/2.8 lens, and my Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. The results were, well, suboptimal - partly due to the strong light pollution, partly due to passing clouds, but also the lesser quality of that 135mm lens. Still, it was an interesting experiment.
After a holiday with no luck at all with the weather, and a thursday with wonderful sky but no fitness, finally this saturday there was an occasion for observing - with the colleagues from AAL. The sky wasn't entirely clear (some clouds, quite some humidity high up) and the seeing was pretty bad (i.e. blurry planets). Anyway, the people were interesting to talk to and exchange experiences, we got to see 3 planets (Venus, half of it anyway; Jupiter with 2 moons; Saturn). I did get a visual of the ring nebula, at 100x magnification. We got to see the ISS fly by twice. Late, thanks to a colleague keeping track of satellites, we got to see a bright Iridium flare. What we didn't get to see was the moonrise, as that happend behind a cloud. After the public left, I did some experimenting with the DSLR, e.g. quickly pointing to the ring nebula, the whirlpool galaxy (with which I'm so experimented by now that I had it perfectly centered), and finally the needle galaxy NGC4565 - this was the first time I looked for it using the Newton, the orientation help Mel 111 being so large that it didn't fit in the finder scope, causing me to first hunt around the wrong end of it. Next time that one will work out better, I'll happily try a long series there.
I definitely wanted to try the newly acquired SkyWatcher ED80/600, despite suboptimal conditions: thin clouds, high humidity, bad seeing etc. Those clouds were supposed to clear up towards the north of the country, but going way up there wasn't really on the scope… so I tried for something towards the east of the country - not that I'd go right next to the Moselle valley (which would be even more humid). I ended up somewhere between Imbringen and Altlinster, north of Bourglinster. Conditions remained suboptimal there, but other than the very bright dome over Luxembourg-city, which hid the Sagittarius and Scorpio regions, it doesn't seem too bad.
I did have a fight with north alignment, due to too much high clouds. Venus and Jupiter were up in the West, I did get to see the ISS pass, later I went for targets mainly around Cygnus and Lyra - including Sadr, Deneb with the north america nebula, part of the veil nebula, Sagitta etc. Due to lots of dew forming plus high clouds passing, results are of limited quality.
At last, a weekend evening with clear skies announced. Despite the moon being at 3/4, I decided to head out to Ielwen, as it had been a while since I got to see the southern sky, Scorpius and Sagittarius in particular. As I set up, it was still rather bright, but the moon, Venus and Jupiter were clearly visible, Saturn joining them soon. Thin clouds were still very present though.
Despite these thin clouds and the moon, the Milky Way became visible, and quite some objects were visible - not so much true for the southern sky though. Only after 2 o'clock the sky finally cleared up, and I had an hour's worth of decent visibility, especially with the moon setting - which allowed going for the quite low Sagittarius region. At around 3 o'clock, the sky got noticeably grey (instead of black), the sunrise getting closer. That, along with quite some condensation, made me pack up.
Using the “big stuff”, I got in series of: dumbbell nebula, eagle nebula, veil nebula, lagoon nebula, trifid nebula. The “small stuff” gave me a whole lot of different targets, all the milky way from Cassiopeia to Sagittarius, plus some elsewhere including the Andromeda galaxy. I am again astounded by the quality provided by the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens, despite it being “light plastic”. I'm very happy too with the Canon 200mm L f/2.8 lens. I'm still in some doubt about the 10-18, probably mostly due to the fact it's not that quick, thus needing longer exposure times. All in all, the night gave me more than 9GB of data!
Post-processing these pictures, I used some different techniques, in some cases yielding far better results that previously. Instead of mostly using “color/levels” in GIMP 2.9, I played with “color/curves”, which can bring out the signal much more brightly - which is especially useful for e.g. the milky way.
Clear sky announced, weekend, no moon (until after 02:00 anyway)… off to Ielwen again. This time around, there were hardly any clouds, only far and very low to the western horizon. Venus and Jupiter were still visible, not too far apart, low over the western horizon. Saturn was clearly visible in the south. Later, when the sky was already mostly dark and stars were out all around, surprise: noctilucent clouds in the north-north-west!
I set up the Newton on the EQ6, targeting Sagittarius. M4 came quite early, for a few pics only, being very low over the horizon and it being not-quite-entirely-dark yet. More seriously, the Lagoon nebula came next, then the Swan/Omega nebula. Finally, I switched from the Newton to the ED80, and went for Andromeda. All this was using the 450Da.
Meanwhile, the StarAdventurer got used with the 500D, using different lenses. The 10-18 was used for panorama shots of the Milky Way. The 50mm was used for Scorpius, Sagittarius, the region between Cepheus and Cygnus, Cassiopeia. The 200mm lens got used on Venus/Jupiter, the Inkspot region, the Lagoon and Trifid region, the Swan and Eagle region, Antares/M4 region, Ptolemaeus/Butterfly cluster regions (very very low over the horizon) - and I tried for the Veil nebula too, but had trouble with longer exposure times. I guess the StarAdventurer was pretty close to its limit with the 200mm lens, with the balance still ok for targets close to the horizon, but not really ok when going for something close to zenith. The close horizon had me using rather short exposure times anyway, but I couldn't go to a full minute for the Veil (trails instead of stars, even after re-checking the polar alignment).
For next time, I'll try the 200mm lens on the Star Adventurer with the L rail and counterweight.
As to post-processing: I haven't been very happy with regim's “remove gradient” function, and instead used the “flatten background” in fitswork. While the first causes a strange colored, not really flat background, the latter forces quite substantial crops, but provides good results for the middle part of the image. I'm not entirely happy with either, but there's a distinct possibility of PEBKAC.
Rather clear sky announced, but with the possibility of thunderstorms. When leaving home for Ielwen, I already saw part of a thunderhead cloud to the south, making me doubt the decision to actually go observing.
To make it short - I got to see lightning all night long, toward the south south-east, with a few far up north too.
I started off with the EOS 500D on the StarAdventurer clicking away on those clouds and flashes, and when it was dark enough and clear that I wouldn't need to pack up again in a hurry, I also set up the EOS450D with the ED80 on the NEQ6, and went for the Veil nebula (western parts).
Later, I switched to using the 450Da with the normal lenses (misc targets), and put the 500D on the ED80 (Andromeda galaxy).
The last several pictures were done with the 450Da and normal lenses on the EQ6, allowing for longer exposures.
I have been quite pleased with the preliminary results of the 450Da and normal lenses, especially around the Milky Way - the nebulae indeed come out way better. I'll have to repeat the experiment, especially with the NEQ6 and long exposures.
I've also started to manufacture an adaptor from the normal Vixen GP prism rail to finder scope socket, so as to be able to fit my guiding scope next to the photo lens, and try out guiding that way - with the guiding scope doing higher magnification than the photo lenses, guiding shouldn't be an issue even with the SynGuider.
Perseides public observation session at Donatuskapell between Beidweiler and Eschweiler. This was my first attending of this particular event, there were a whole lot of people - AAL president Nic Feuerstein estimated 400 guests. For my taste, decidedly too much activity. I didn't dare put up my tripod and camera amongst the people, but the parking space wasn't “it” either - cars arriving and leaving all the time, with bright LEDs ruining any night adaptation one would get. When it calmed down a bit, I set up anyway near other's telescopes, which was nice enough for the company, but still not the right thing for a real astrophotography session. I ended up with loads of pictures including airplanes, satellites, laser pointers, but only a single weak perseide. Ok, visually I did get to see some brighter ones, often though in peripheral vision only. In Jhang's Meade SC, I got to see Saturn and the dumbbell nebula, but due to seeing, magnification had to remain low and was something I can easily achive with my own equipment. I could confirm what I already knew about my binoculars, which is they aren't worth a damn astronomically. I guess for the next meteor shower, I'll be on my own, and will calmly set up my tripod + camera (the 500D, not the 450Da this time) for a continuous session - hopefully allowing for a nice timelapse or a star trail image. I might even want to get a very fast very wide angle lens instead of my current 10-18.
Site: Ielwen, on the first evening of the Schueberfouer 2015. The sky was reasonably clear, but there was some moisture anyway, including a very few small passing clouds. I got to see some meteorids, probably leftovers from the Perseides.
I tried the SynGuider for a change, but wasn't lucky, I just don't get the hang of it (even just getting Deneb into the preview). The test was with the SynGuider on the FH80/400, parallel to the EOS500D.
I then moved on to the ED80/600 f/7.5 with the Televue 0.8 reducer/flattener, trying for the Elephant's Trunk.
I also tried the StarAdventurer with L-rail plus selfmade counterweight, with the 200mm f/2.8 and EOS500D on the ball head fixed to the L-rail, targeting the Sadr region. I then went back to the classic setup with the ball head straight on the StarAdventurer. Here, I went for the veil nebula, perseus double, pinwheel galaxy (M101), the whirlpool galaxy.
While the sky wasn't entirely clear, I used the occasion to test my newly aquired, used SkyScan GoTo handpiece for the NEQ6 mount. The north alignment was done as usual, followed by inputting the date, time and GPS location, then the 3-star alignment. Despite the rather quickly/roughly done setup, it was good enough to correctly point the 80/400 at different objects. The testing was done visually only, no astrophotography involved.
Clear sky, last day of the Schueberfouer. Instead of going to watch the fireworks, I went out to the Ielwen site and set up the now-NEQ6-SkyScan. North alignment was difficult, as the lighting of the polar scope didn't appear to be working. I later noticed there's an option on the SkyScan to dim the lighting, and it was at 40%… so I turned that up for next time. Still, I only got 60s worth of exposure times (tracking only) with the N200/1000, which is below my usual 120s. There, I later noticed that I had forgotten to tighten the screw binding the mount to the tripod. Ugh.
I finally did a series of 60s pics of the crescent nebula, followed by a series of 120s pics of the heart nebula - or rather, part thereof. I added 9 minutes' worth of 60s pics of the triangulum galaxy.
Aligning the StarAdventurer worked nicely this time around, and I did take a few series: 4-minute exposures (32min total) wide-angle of Cygnus etc., some of the milky way from the Pleiades to Cassiopeia. Using the 200mm lens, I did M31 (Andromeda galaxy), tried for the California nebula (way too low over the horizon, unmodded 500D), Aries, and the Pleiades. I did start to get more humid before I finally stopped.
Oh, looking towards Luxembourg-town, the bright light dome was very visible (no wonder with the Schueberfouer), but even worse was the “presence” of a beamer (also from the Schueberfouer), which I thought were forbidden.
For the total eclipse of the moon, I met up with F.S. at Ielwen. I was a bit slow with setting up, so I missed getting a picture of the full “super” moon before the start of the eclipse. Also, I didn't have sufficient patience to wait out the utter end of the event, what with having to go to work and having to deal with heavy traffic for the way back. In between, I did a nice series of pictures using the N200/1000 and the 500D, which I hope to turn into a little timelapse video. The 450D got used with the standard lens on a simple tripod (i.e. no tracking), catching the progress of the moon over time. Some longer exposures show the landscape, into which I want to copy the snaps of the moon itself. Here, I had to deal with quite some dew.
We also got to see a few planets: first Venus, a bit lower to its left Mars, and a bit later Jupiter came along (at dawn). During the main part of the eclipse, the milky way was clearly visible. Even the presence of “some” moon though made for useless conditions (at least for deep sky astrophotography). It was quite astounding to see a number of “winter objects” already high up, from Perseus via Auriga, Taurus, Orion to Gemini, Cancer and Leo (among others).
I made use of the more or less clear sky for a first test with the MGEN autoguider. This didn't work out as expected, but probably was due to suboptimal settings and my not having the user guide at hand with practical examples. It was quite some fiddling to get a decently bright star into the guiding scope at all, afterwards I had that wobbly blob (due to seeing) for a guide star… 5 minutes of exposure were ok, 10 or 20 minutes, not (star trails). Btw, I did try with the Sadr region (Cygnus), using the N200/1000.
Also, GoTo didn't work out - part of the reason being my simply switching of the NEQ6 last time instead of parking it first, and being too impatient to restart the whole procedure. Of course, I didn't need GoTo for the MGEN testing.
This morning, a nice alignment of Venus, the Moon, Mars and Jupiter in the south-east was announced. When the cloud cover somewhat cleared up, I indeed got to see and photograph the scenery, even if I couldn't identify Mars, the sky being quite bright already. Hopefully, we'll have clear skies for the morning of the 18th, Mars and Jupiter being very close then.
After a long while with no opportunity to observe (weather, other obligations), I finally got out this envening to the Ielwen site, no moon. On the way I had my reservations, what with fog banks, but on the site itself I was out of it, even if I could see more fog banks around (looked great actually).
Due to some wind, I used the ED80. My targets were the California nebula, the Pleiades, and I tried for IC405 (flaming star nebula) before having to break off due to thin clouds. I did a few single shots around Orion (flame/horsehead, great orion nebula). The setup was done with GoTo, but no guiding. The GoTo went pretty well this time, even if I was off by 3 days with the date though - stupid beginner's mistake.
Using the small equipment, I also went for the central part of Auriga, the Pleiades, and did some single shots elsewhere. The more interesting pictures to be taken were of the fog banks around, i.e. the landscape (partly including stars). Interestingly, the pics from Auriga were fine (200mm, 60s each), whereas most pics of the Pleiades had some issue or other - don't know what went differently, whether there was more wind, or something else entirely. On later pics I definitely had some drift, so maybe the mount got out of alignment.
A clear evening sky was announced, F.S. manifested himself, and so we both went to the Limpach site. On the way there, I got to see the moon setting, gone by the time I arrived. On site, I found it was actually quite windy, and cold to boot - so no Newton, and a definite need for the warmer clothing.
I set up the NEQ6 with even more care than usual, especially with regard to GoTo - and had it working flawlessly at last. Having it slew to some object really targeted quite perfectly. Now that that's definitely worked out, I'll definitely move on to get the guiding going.
Due to the wind, I couldn't use longer exposures (i.e. 2 minutes weren't possible), so I had to limit myself to 60s individual exposures. Things were even worse with the StarAdventurer, the 200mm lens was essentially unusable there, even with the 50mm it was dicey. I'll have to see about the results, but next time with such wind I'll do as F.S. did this time: put the camera with the camera lens directly on the EQ6, that's rock solid even in this kind of wind.
Using the ED80 with the 450Da I went for the Pleiades and especially the IC405/IC410 combo in Auriga, plus a few other test shots. The 500D plus 50mm got used on the region from lower Perseus to the Pleiades, then between Perseus and Cassiopeia (i.e. with the Heart and Soul nebulae, double cluster etc.). I also went for Auriga.
Going to midnight, clouds came up, so we had to pack up.
Due to clear sky, no obligations for the morning after, I chose to go to Ielwen… where I found myself in fog, but with a clear view to zenith. I used the N200/1000 on M52 (Cassiopeia, close to the bubble nebula), but unfortunately managed to miss the bubble. I also used the 200mm lens on IC405/410, plus a few test shots elsewhere. At some point, the fog got thicker, so I had to pack up again. After a drive home, mainly through fog, I found clear sky from my backyard… still illuminated by the neighbor's lighting. I tried for some pictures anyway, but the 200mm lens fogged up pretty quickly. Of course, just as I decided to call it quits, the neighbor turned off their lights…
Morning: the sky was clear when we woke the kids, so I quickly took a few pictures of the moon, with Venus to its lower left, Spica to its lower right, Mars far up to its right. From that viewing point, Jupiter was hidden behind the buildings, it would have been even further up right from Mars.
Evening: the sky was clear again, the neighbor in the back to the left didn't have his annoying lighting on, so I tried for some pictures from my back yard, in spite of the city lights and some slight humidity. I used the 200mm lens with the EOS 450Da on the StarAdventurer mount. 30s per frame were doable, with f/4 towards zenith, f/10 closer to the horizon. The targets were mainly the california nebula region and Orion (from flame nebula to the great orion nebula M42), with some test shots of the Pleiades (M45), the IC405/410 region (flaming star and tadpole nebulae), and Sharpless 264 (aka lambda orionis). I took care to not only shoot dark frames, but bias frames and flat frames (for the different apertures!) too.
The results have been obvious: shots from my backyard are utterly useless. Maybe an IDAS-style filter would help, or maybe going to narrowband, but plain DSLR without a filter just doesn't cut it.
Morning: the sky was clear in the morning, so I again took some pictures of the Moon and planets Venus, Mars and Jupiter. As dawn was already breaking, I'll have to see whether Mars actually is visible on the pictures, as well as some of the brighter stars of Virgo, Leo etc.
The moon was nicely visible early evening, so when the kids were in bed, I set up the NEQ6 + N200/1000 + EOS500D in the back yard. While the nearly full moon was an easy target, other targets were useless. I did try single shots around, but there was simply too much mist, moon and city lights. I must have narrowly missed the Aldebaran occultation happening, as Taurus' eye wasn't visible to either side of the moon at that point.
Early morning, the sky was clear, so I set up the StarAdventurer with the 500D / 55-250mm in the back yard and pointed it towards Spica and Mars, hoping to catch the C/2013 Catalina comet. As I saw later in Stellarium, I most probably missed it, as the comet by now is getting closer to Arcturus (Bootes) - maybe I've been lucky with 1-2 shots where I pointed further up. Also, I took individual shots towards Venus and Jupiter, even if it wasn't the right equipment for these. At least one one of the pics of Jupiter, several moons were identifiable. Being in town and close to dawn didn't help, so I had to severely limit the exposure of the individual frames, lest I get uniform orange results.