No, no clear sky. But, I've taken the time to test the ASI1600 from my new Lenovo ThinkPad X395, using the USB cable provided with the camera. Unlike my old laptop, no connectivity trouble here. I used the opportunity to test my different camera lenses with the ASI1600 and EFW, as I had already found that there are issues with getting into focus on infinity, at least using the EOS adapter from TS. The results were as follows:

Usable:

• Canon EF 200 f/2.8 L
• Canon EF 24-105 f/4 L: sharp from 70mm to 105mm
• Canon EF-S 10-18: sharp at 15mm, focusing doesn't seem to work (STM)
• Canon EF 100-400 L: good at 100mm only
• Canon EF-S 17-55 f/2.8: 40mm to 55mm
• Canon EF-S 55-250: 100mm to 250mm
• Canon EF-S 18-55 IS: 30mm to 55mm
• Sigma 17-70: 40mm to 70mm

Unusable:

• Canon EF-S 24
• Canon EF 40
• Canon EF 50
• Pentacon 135
• Pentacon 50
• Sigma 400 (misses sharp point very narrowly)
• Tokina 11-16 f/2.8

After a long pause, clear sky for a change. As I was out woodworking, I shortened that and went home early to set up a scope. And no big lights on at the neighbor's! I decided on the EQ6 with the ED80 scope and the ASI1600, all to be handled via the new Lenovo Thinkpad. There are sufficient USB ports for both the cam and the EQDirect connection, the backlit keyboard definitely helps in the dark. As this was the first time I plugged the EQDirect cable in, the serial driver got installed, and in ASCOM I had to properly set COM3 (in my case) as the serial port (autodetection failed). It also looked like the EQMOD software worked from there, I was able to unpark the mount. But, configuring Stellarium automatically failed, something about having a much more recent Stellarium than supported/tested. This turned out not to work, and I didn't have the patience then to research this (hey, it was already late, and freezing!).

I finally decided to go with a DSLR and no guiding. Setting up the classic goto handset though made trouble too, as the first star used for alignment was pointed at in an utterly wrong direction. After a couple of retries, a full off/unplug/replug/on ended up helping. I had intended on some object in Orion, but that had already wandered far over and partly out of sight, so I went for 30 minutes of the cone nebula / christmas tree region. The DSLR I used was the 6D - full frame… which turned out to be heavily vignetting with this setup (ED80 + TV0.8). Some cropping helped save from that vignetting, but the 30 minutes of total exposure (with 1-min subs) was obviously insufficient to turn out the h-alpha nebula.

And another failure - when I wanted to use my tried and true battery with the flatfield box, it turned out the battery didn't have enough juice… it had suffered from a mistake (after recharging after the last use, I only unplugged the charger, but left its pincers on the battery - the battery must have utterly discharged through the charger then), and recharging with a more powerful charger had indeed shown a problem with keeping a charge… which is confirmed. Oh well, that battery has served more than 7 years, I guess that's a normal lifetime.

The sky cleared up some when I was woodworking, thankfully I had my 6D along - the satellite dish up at Cloche d'Or made for a good foreground, with the Moon and Venus at the back.

Starting winter holidays in the black forest region, I used an opportunity of temporary openings in the clouds to take some pictures of the general vincinity of Orion and Orion itself - on a standard photo tripod, using the 6D and 24-105mm lens, no tracking. Having to keep the exposure times short enough to avoid getting trails for stars, and with clouds still passing quickly, the end result is mediocre at best.

The conditions weren't really much better than on 16th, but this time I set up the Star Adventurer and used the 6D with the 200mm lens. With my narrow field of view, I quickly had to stop my series - one of the central region of Orion, from the great Orion nebula at the bottom to M78 at the top, with the running man, horsehead and flame nebulas in between; the other was of the “feet of the twins” with the jellyfish nebula, the M35 cluster, and the NGC2174 monkey head nebula. Especially the Orion picture turned out quite nice.

At the end of the afternoon, the alps were visible in the south from Feldberg. After dark, unfortunately clouds had come back up and they couldn't be seen any more, I'd have loved a view of them with Orion above. While driving around and taking some night shots, I found the sky turned clearer again, and I again set up the StarAdventurer, using the 6D and the 24-105 lens. Within my narrow field of view lay the region from Procyon to the lower parts of Gemini, including the christmas tree cluster and nebula. The end result could be better.

Today was the general assembly of AAL, I've become a member of the committee. Some interesting items came up, among which the fact we're going to move to a different club room very soon, and that the club will celebrate its 50 years next year (founded in 1971). I'm also going to do a presentation sometime in the coming months, I'll have to think up something… probably about astrophotography while on holidays, using rather portable equipment, plus the corresponding processing.

Earlier in the day I've had thoughts on a setup specifically for use with planets, as that's a really weak point with my current equipment, and it might get use also with the moon and the sun even when conditions are too bad for deep sky. Also, my elder son showed interest in taking planetary pictures. My conclusion was that camera-wise, something like the ASI 178MC would be best (over the 290MC or the 120MC I actually have). Indeed while the 290MC has a narrower field of view, the resolution is better on the 178MC, and per pixel it turns out better with the 178MC - its wider field of view is then a bonus. Other cameras have larger sensors, losing on the per-pixel resolution. Then it becomes a matter of focal length - for the planets, more is better. Cost-wise, Maksutovs turn out better than Schmitt-Cassegrains, so it looks like the SkyWatcher 180 Maksutov is most interesting with 2700mm of focal length… combined with the 3x barlow, that would compute to 8100mm, still 5400 with the 2x barlow. That's way more than the max 3000mm I get with my Newton and the 3x barlow. The main issue, as usual, would be cost - the ASI178MC is currently at 429 EUR, the BKM180OTA is at 1063 EUR.

Amid the Coronavirus / COVID19 pandemic, it is a welcome relief to get out and set up a telescope, even if it's only in the back yard.

In the morning, I put up the Coronado PST on the Meade LXD75 to have a look at the sun, but no features could be identified - no sunspots whatsoever, and I also couldn't identify any protuberances.

By the way - with all the flights cancelled, the sky is surprisingly blue - no contrails whatsoever.

In the evening, I wanted to go for galaxies using the 8“ Newton, but there was way too much wind for that. So I went with the ED80, on the EQ6, with GoTo using Stellarium on the Thinkpad, MGEN autoguider, and the 7D mark II camera. I first took a 1-hour series of 1-min shots at ISO1600 of the region of the M97 Owl nebula (and M108 Surfboard galaxy), followed by 3 test shots each of the M51 Whirlpool, M63 Sunflower and M94 Croc's Eye galaxies plus Markarian's chain. By then I felt quite frozen and stopped there - after the usual series of flats, bias and dark frames. Did I mention it was cold?

While I wasn't motivated for a repeat of yesterday's session, I did see a notification about the ISS passing by - and went out with the 7Dii and 100-400mm lens. From previous reads, I knew the approximate settings to use and… well, I was positively suprised by the result. While the ISS was very small in those pictures, some details were absolutely identifiable. This is promising for further attempts using the real equipment ™.

The sky is still quite clear, even if seeing conditions are less than optimal. Still no contrails thanks to the corona pandemic stopping most flights. Despite te wind, I decided to put up the 8” newton. After a proper setup of Stellarium as GoTo (telescope control entirely from there, no StellariumScope), I went for M101 Pinwheel galaxy. After a while (approx 1/2h), I noticed the laptop had gone to sleep, but the mount still tracked. ASCOM remained active, but Stellarium hang… but when I killed it through task manager, the mount stopped tracking. So I stopped the series on M101. After a re-doing of the alignment, I now went for M94 Croc's Eye galaxy. All pics 60s ISO1600 with the 7Dii, no guiding.

Still home-bound during the Coronavirus pandemic. With my eldest son, I had a go at the ISS, scheduled for just before 21h. Setting up happened a bit late, Newton with ASI 120MC. It turned out my Thinkpad wasn't ready for the 120MC, so I quickly switched to my older laptop, also meaning less disk space. Setup was done vis-à-vis Venus, with the corresponding settings in FireCapture.

Just before the ISS was due, I noticed another satellite coming, not quite in the expected path but further south. It turned out that was actually a Starlink train, with at least 3 satellites, two in a row and a third in a parallel trajectory. This provided me with a first trial run manually pointing at one of these. Then came the ISS. From the setup point, it was hidden behind the neighbor's house almost until zenith, then it got quite tricky following it - after it was due east, things went better. When it reached the horizon, I checked to stop recording, by then though the video file had reached 4GB and FireCapture displayed an error. Thankfully though, most of the run was properly recorded.

I showed my son some other objects, including the Pleiades (M45), the Hyades with Aldebaran, also Venus within Taurus. Above that Auriga, with the Moon to its left. To the east, I tried for M51 Whirlpool and the Leo triplet, but the sky was still too bright for that. After my son remarked about the moon, that we might use the foto camera to picture that, we did just that - I moved the scope so it could point there, and we put up the 7Dii. I showed him how to focus and center the picture, checking for proper exposure, and then we just took a number of pictures - to be processed the day after.

It turned out the Starlink sats weren't properly visible in the first video taken. The ISS on the other hand… overexposed, but structure with solar panels are obvious in a number of frames. Same settings but adding a barlow lens should correct the exposure problem and offer more detail, but properly pointing will be still more difficult.

Venus is due to meet with the Pleiades M45. This evening, Venus was right under the Pleiades. I put up the 7Dii with the 100-400L on the StarAdventurer for a series of pictures (site: between the neighbor's and my own house). Despite taking the protector filter off the lens, I still got reflections from the very bright Venus. Also, I had to crop the picture quite some, with the borders (especially top and left) being very bright. I wonder whether that's from the stacking or from the background flattening in fitswork.

Closest encounter of Venus and the Pleiades M45, Venus being just to the left of the main part of the Pleiades. Having had to severely crop the previous days's picture, I used the 200mm lens, not from my own ground but from across the street, on the field behind the apartment complex. I felt the sky wasn't entirely clear, Venus had quite a halo, making it utterly impossible to work out the clouds around the Pleiades.

Venus has moved further, now lengthening the handle of the Pleiades M45. I again used the 200mm lens, but from my own ground this time. The sky was clearer than the evening before, with lots of pushing I got to work out some of the clouds around the Pleiades depite having had quite a short series of pictures - not much room between the neighbor's house and my own.

In the back yard, I set up the 8“ Newton and used the ASI 120MM Mini to capture the moon. I did a whole series of videos using the 2x barlow, then another without barlow - both series sufficient for a mosaic of the whole moon. I then also video'ed some areas with the 3x barlow. With 1000 frames per video and so many videos per series, I accumulated quite some data - about 70GB (!) - and that's for a low-resolution camera. For post-processing, I stacked the best 20% of each video in AutoStakkert, used autostitch on the conv (sharpened) files, and did a final processing in GIMP. MS ICE wasn't able to handle the stitching, or I couldn't use it properly. Autostitch unfortunately only outputs JPG, thus is lossy (vs. the original TIFFs). I also tried versions with further sharpening using Wavelets in Registax, but that was too much, according to colleagues with more experience.

With the supermoon announced, I just took a couple pictures with the 100-400L lens, then did a mini series using the FH80/400. The result was disappointing.

More moon pics (99% waning), this time with the 7Dii on the Newton. I did a long series of pictures, stacking different amounts of them to compare results.

I took out my bicycle to the location “um Schass” (derived from the french “chasse”, hunt) between Merl and Schléiwenhaff. The goal was to take star trails pictures over Luxembourg town, using a standard tripod, the 6D and (a first) the recently acquired manual 14mm Walimex Pro lens. Focusing turned out more difficult than expected, as I had a hard time locating a star in live view, even fully zoomed. I ended up focusing on the lights of the town. I may have made a mistake there by doing this with quite closed aperture instead of doing it with aperture wide open (confirmed). I started out quite close to the woods, but relocated to right next to the (utterly deserted) street to have a better view of the town. I felt there were rather few stars visible over town, under Ursa Major, except maybe for Bootes. The sky did appear less than clear, light pollution was very obvious. I did miss binoculars or a tele lens to have a closer look at town, I guess next time I'll take a bit more equipment along - and wear sth warmer, even if biking.

I took the bicycle to a mini rural way on the top of the little hill behind the VdL bus garage, towards Cessange. As presiously at the Schass, I set up the 6D with the 14mm Walimex Pro lens for star trails over Luxembourg City. Focusing was no problem this time, I did that while at f/2.8, with live view zoomed on the Cathedral, and closed aperture to f/11 afterwards. Again I did a series of 2 minute exposures, ISO400. Some spotlights beaming into the sky were obvious. For post-processing, besides the classic star trails (stamping out some reflections from car lights) I also saved the whole series progressing from naught to full star trails and used ffmpeg to generate a short video from that.

Besides running the star trails series, I had taken along the 600D. The Sigma 17-70 proved a failure again, even when set to manual focus it is impossible to take a picture at night, when it's simply too dark to… yes, focus. So I only had the 55-250 available, which I used on some subjects around town. I did notice some starlink satellites passing over, which I also tried to take pictures of, but success was limited.