The usual Autumn stretch of poor weather, combined with the municipal election, kept me off the air for several weeks. Tonight conditions were very good, but cold, and I started everything up again.

More configuration work was needed, still recovering from a computer hard disk change a few months ago. Then I recalibrated the mount’s home position (using a great method from Arizona Skys), re-did a sky model, and did some tests. Periodic error is a little more ragged than I would like, so some daytime session I’ll check and adjust the play in the RA gear.

Meanwhile, most of the raggedness could be guided out. I took a few test images for fun. This one, of M27, shows nice colour. It’s a simple stack of 3 10-minute exposures, uncalibrated. (I need to collect a new set of Flats and Darks, which I’ll do with the dome closed next free and cloudy night.)

Still to do: I have no reference data for setting the colour balance when de-bayering images from this one-shot colour camera. I plan to gather either some bright moon surface images or some G2V stars (ideally, both) to calculate proper colour ratios.